Posted on Wednesday, February 4, 2009
SCRAWL, the Westminster College student literary magazine, will sponsor an all-day Writers Festival Friday, Feb. 13, in the Berlin Lounge of the McKelvey Campus Center. The event is free and open to the public.
Guest speakers will read from their work and talk about writing, the writer's life, and the business of writing. They include:
Joe Conlin, fiction writer, is scheduled to speak at 9:20 a.m. He edits and publishes the online literary magazine SNReview; teaches composition at Sacred Heart University; and teaches graduate-level creative writing (fiction and non-fiction) at Western Connecticut State University. His work has appeared in numerous publications and has received many honors, including selection as a finalist in the Santa Fe Writer's Competition.
Carl Kurlander, screenwriter and television producer, is scheduled to speak at 12:15 p.m. He is best known for his work on American teen sitcoms, including Saved by the Bell: The New Class, Hang Time, USA High, and Malibu, CA, and as co-writer of St. Elmo's Fire.
Dr. Andrew Ade, Westminster assistant professor of English and a playwright, will give the first reading of Language Barrier at 2 p.m. Ade specializes in dramatic literature and organizes the Playwrights Workshop. He has written full-length, one-act, and ten-minute plays, as well as the book and lyrics for the musical "How the Children Stopped the Wars" with composer Anthony Billera. His play A Question of Taste won Best Play honors at the Pittsburgh Playwrights Theater Company's 2007 "Theater Festival in Black and White."
Paula Closson Buck, poet and professor of creative writing and literature at Bucknell University, is scheduled to speak at 3 p.m. The editor of Bucknell's literary magazine, West Branch, is the award-winning author of two collections of poetry: The Acquiescent Villa and Litanies Near Water. Her poems have appeared in many of the nation's top literary journals, including The Denver Quarterly, The Gettysburg Review, The Ohio Review, Shenandoah, and The Southern Review.
Kurlander's documentary, My Tale of Two Cities, will be shown at 7 p.m. in the Sebastian Mueller Theater. The film, an attempt to help his hometown's film industry, tells the story of Kurlander's journey back to Pittsburgh. It stars well-known Pittsburghers that include former Steeler Franco Harris, philanthropist and political wife Teresa Heinz Kerry, and former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill. Additional information about the movie is available at www.mytaleoftwocities.com.
Contact Evann Garrison, Westminster lecturer of English and faculty adviser to SCRAWL, at (724) 946-7341 or e-mail garriseg@westminster.edu for more information.
