The Lyric Essay: Weaving Small Parts into a Whole
Ursula K. Le Guin showed us how stories are carrier bags for sustenance. In this cross-genre workshop, we will write together, using Ursula’s poetry and prose as prompts to take us into our own personal stories. As the week progresses, we will each weave our short narratives, prose poems, and research—finding the thread that connects them into a lyric essay. We will celebrate the fragment, the hybrid, the collage, the mosaic—with an overall spirit of experimentation and play.
Perrin Kerns served as the Director of Writing at Marylhurst University for 15 years. She currently teaches literature and creative nonfiction for Prescott College. Her own creative work has taken her from lyric essay to digital story, and to making personal narrative documentaries based on her lyric essays. Most recently, her film about a miscarriage, “What I Can Tell You,” won the best short animation at the Oregon Independent Film Festival in Portland.