What: “Speaker for the Dead” Poetry Workshop, led by Anders Carlson-Wee
When: Saturday, September 30 12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Where: MWC (c/o RIPL, 401 19th St., Rock Island, IL)
Cost: $10 for MWC members // $15 for non-members // FREE for high school/college students!

MWC is thrilled to welcome NEA Poetry Fellow Anders Carlson-Wee to teach a persona poetry workshop on September 30. Anders will be reading at the All Sesnses Festival on Friday, September 29, and will be leading this workshop at MWC the following morning. What’s more–thanks to the support of Dr. Robin Throne and the Regional Development Authority, we are able to offer this workshop at a discount to the community, and free to high school & college students! Here’s a complete description:

Speaker for  the Dead

Tired of being yourself? Want to get inside a character’s head, or write a poem in another’s voice? This class is about persona: writing in voices other than our own. In this two-hour course, we will invent our own personas and deepen them through writing exercises and games. We will engage in guided free-writing exercises to explore inhabiting our character’s personalities; we will use our work to discuss voice, humor, psychology, timing, agenda, and the power of empathy. We will have some laughs. We will give voice to the dead.


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Anders Carlson-Wee is a 2015 NEA Creative Writing Fellow and the author of Dynamite, winner of the 2015 Frost Place Chapbook Prize. His work has appeared in Ploughshares, New England Review, The Sun, AGNI, Poetry Daily, Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, Best New Poets, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and Narrative Magazine, which also featured him on its “30 Below 30” list of young writers to watch. Winner of Ninth Letter’s Poetry Award, Blue Mesa Review’s Poetry Prize, and New Delta Review’s Editors’ Choice Prize, he was runner-up for the 2016 Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize. His work has been translated into Chinese. He lives in Minneapolis, where he serves as a McKnight Foundation Creative Writing Fellow.