Visual Storytelling
A Creative Writing, Illustration, and Graphic Storytelling Workshop
In this exciting and innovative workshop, we’ll write microfiction, illustrate personal comic strips, and launch zines. There is no prior drawing experience required, only an open mind. The imperfect hand of the artist is an embraced feature here; we’ll play with hybrid narratives and use our passions and personal experience to create new and unexpected material. Artists we might discuss include Jillian Tamaki, Mira Jacob, and Chelsea Martin, and we’ll find inspiration in a multiplicity of genres, including novels, short stories, New York Times op eds, comics, and zines. By the week’s end we’ll have pages of new work and the know-how to continue making visual narratives.
Sharma Shields is the author of a short story collection, Favorite Monster, and two novels, The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac and The Cassandra. Sharma’s short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Electric Lit, Catapult, Slice, Slate, Fairy Tale Review, Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, Fugue, and elsewhere and have garnered such prizes as the 2020 PNBA Award, a 2020 Artist Trust Fellowship, 2016 Washington State Book Award, the Autumn House Fiction Prize, the Tim McGinnis Award for Humor, and the A.B. Guthrie Award for Outstanding Prose. She received her B.A. in English Literature from the University of Washington (2000) and her MFA from the University of Montana (2004). Sharma has managed a small press, Scablands Books, and is a contributing editor for Moss. Sharma has worked in independent bookstores and public libraries throughout Washington State and is currently the Writing Education Specialist for Spokane Public Library.
Learn more: sharmashields.com
Simeon (Sam) Mills studied architecture at Columbia University, creative writing at the University of Montana, and cartooning on his own. He’s published a graphic novel, Butcher Paper, and a prose science-fiction novel, The Obsoletes. His logos, illustrations, and cartoons have appeared in The Inlander, Smoke Long Quarterly, Scablands Books, Okey Panky and other venues. At Eastern Washington University, he teaches classes in drawing, visual storytelling, and imaginary worlds. He embraces the unplanned, unexpected elements that find their way into his drawings and stories—and he’s committed to inspiring his students to encounter those elements in their work, too.
Lean more: simeonmills.com