On Friday, April 13, 2018 from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., Janet Ruth Heller and Miriam Bat-Ami will do a workshop about “Writing and Revising Religious Poetry and Prose” for the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College in the Prince Conference Center at 1800 E Beltline Ave SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 49546. This workshop will occur in the Hickory Room. For more information about this conference, please see its website at http://festival.calvin.edu/
The leaders will give participants some writing prompts and time to write spiritual poems, essays, stories, or dramas. The leaders will also suggest strategies for improving drafts. We will work in small groups to help one another revise these works by developing ideas, cutting extra words, finding better images, playing with sounds, and changing the structure. The leaders will also share advice to participants about finding journals and editors to publish our work.
Janet Ruth Heller is president of the Michigan College English Association. She has published three poetry books: Exodus (WordTech Editions, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012), and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011). The University of Missouri Press published her scholarly book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama (1990). Fictive Press published Heller’s middle-grade chapter book about sibling rivalry, The Passover Surprise (2015). Her children’s book about bullying, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 4th edn. 2014), has won four national awards. Her website is https://www.janetruthheller.com
