Elements of Writing Workshop: Short-Stories, Poems and One-Act Plays

In anticipation of the AHSGR 2024 Storytelling Contest, we’re offering a three-day writing workshop to hone your story telling skills or provide inspiration for you next story. This workshop is broken into three parts with each part building on from the last.

• Session 1 (April 11): Elements of Writing: Short-Stories, Poems, One-Act Plays – An overview of the types and construction of prose, poems, and one-act plays. Examples will focus on previously published works of cultural or family history, folklore, and oral tradition and give ideas for connecting a story to an appropriate format.
• Session 2 (April 18): Developing an Idea into a Written Work – You have an idea, or a family story to tell, now what? This session will explore taking the leap from idea to words on paper.
• Session 3 (April 25): Workshopping – The presenters will facilitate a workshopping environment where participants can share their work in a supportive environment and receive constructive feedback from the presenters and fellow participants.

Presenter Biographies:

Meg Arenz has worked on several literary magazines, including Nebraska Wesleyan University’s magazine The Flintlock, where she was the poetry editor from 2022 to 2023, and Columbia College Chicago’s professional magazine Allium, where she is currently a poetry/nonfiction assistant editor. Meg earned a BA in English with a minor in Writing from Nebraska Wesleyan University in 2023 and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia College Chicago. Meg writes poetry, prose, and hybrid work, focusing on the genres of creative nonfiction and magical realism.

Paula Ray is a writer, theater artist, and psychologist who writes about the people she knows and the stories that move her. She studied playwriting at the New School in New York City and, since 2015, four of her short plays examining human struggles in contemporary society have been staged in the annual First Flight Play Festivals in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 2020, she created and produced an ensemble theater piece titled Shadows and Light: Untold Stories, based on lived experiences of people with histories at the intersection of trauma, mental health, and the family court system. She is currently completing work on a full-length history play exploring the mass emigration of the Irish during the famine years of the mid-nineteenth century and the associated development of the “placing out programs,” and in 2023 received a GRACA grant award from UNO to provide financial support for time in Ireland to conduct historical research for the play. In addition to playwriting, Paula is a poet and author of the illustrated children’s book, Max and the Listening Tree.

The Zoom link will be sent out on prior to the event