Be a Catholic Writer
Be a Catholic Writer
Workshops at the Catholic Imagination Conference
For the first time ever, the Catholic Imagination Conference will be hosting workshops at the event during the same time as concurrent sessions. We would love for you to sign up for these ahead of time and receive handouts and other correspondence from our lead writers. The link above allows you to put your name and email in a slot to reserve a seat at the event. There will still be room, if you do not reserve ahead of time, but you will miss the pre-released communication from some of our leaders. Here are the workshops available!
Friday, Sept 30 at 10:30AM with James Matthew Wilson, author of The Strangeness of the Good (Angelico Press, 2021)
Poetry Workshop
The arts remind us of the truth of the incarnation, but none more so than poetry, where form so often becomes the matter, verse-body becomes the spirit or theme. In this workshop, we'll consider the body of verse and how it relates to the great spiritual breadth that poetry comprehends and seeks to make incarnate. Participants are encouraged to bring examples of their own work to serve as part of our discussion.
Friday, Sept 30 at 1:15PM with Cynthia Haven, author of Czeslaw Milosz: A California Life (Heyday, 2021)
Making it Real
Non-fiction is a big world, covering everything from op-eds to literary essays, memoirs to histories, Q&As to biographies. In many ways, it offers the optimal opportunities for early publishing.
What do you wish to say? Who is your target audience? What impact do you wish your writing to have? In our discussion, I want to help you write more effectively, see your writing as an editor sees it, and learn how to navigate the complicated media landscape of today. I will share a few of my pieces from blogs and books and tell the stories behind them.
Friday, Sept 30 at 2:30PM with Uwem Akpan, author of New York, My Village (W.W. Norton & Co. 2021)
Fiction Workshop: abstract forthcoming
Saturday, Oct 1 at 10:30AM with Joshua Hren, author of Infinite Regress (Angelico Press, 2022)
Contemplative Realism: The Duties of Details
In this workshop we will delve into the levels of meaning which fictional details can obtain. While granting due attention to those “on-duty” descriptions that bear mystical or moral significance, we will gain appreciation for those “off-duty” brushstrokes that keep our senses in contact with the literal, which has a goodness all of its own. The contemplative realist carefully and cautiously aspires to imbue “mundane” or non-sacred literature with a numinous sense; in part he does this to elicit wonder, a humbling of ourselves before Mystery. But the Catholic writer can come to the desk burdened by a proclivity to name and tell and show God too readily. Realism demands that we restrain our inclinations to charge too many literal particulars with an aura of transcendence, to lend every other detail a secondary, symbolic, or spiritual significance. True, literal scenes in the Scriptures are historically real in themselves but lead onward in harmony through the other levels of meaning toward the utmost Real, which is the interaction of God and His people in salvation history and, finally, the union of the soul with God in paradise. There is no contradiction between these levels of exegesis; the tangible literal, for the contemplative realist, is in harmony with the suggested spiritual. A naturalistic literature is in error insofar as it portrays the literal as all there is—as if the moral and the spiritual are wishful superimpositions. In all matters, the contemplative realist is constantly discerning which rung of the ladder a given scene or even a given sentence seeks to represent. Ever calibrating according to prudence, this “realist in the higher sense” here allows the literal to redound to the moral, there lets the sensuous stroke remain plain, refusing to strain certain facts or impressions by forcing a supernatural significance upon them.
We will also be offering brown bag lunches both days of the event where writers, editors, and book club leaders will encourage you on your journey as a reader and writer. Mark your calendars, register, and join us this fall!