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WRITING WHAT WRITES YOU – A mixed-genre workshop
Writers of all levels and genres are invited to discover hidden sources of creativity.
This workshop with Caribbean writer Opal Palmer Adisa is based on the premise that there are stories and poems you need to write, but they aren’t necessarily the ones you are writing. Opal Palmer Adisa has developed a technique to help you discover these hidden sources of creativity using guided meditation and even some poems from the Caribbean to tease out this premise. Participants will access material we had not known we had in our storage bag. It does not matter whether you’re a poet or a prose writer, whether you write creative nonfiction or fiction or essay, this workshop will provide you with an opportunity to find out and write what is writing you.
Opal Palmer AdisaAugust
Diverse and multi-genre, writer Opal Palmer Adisa (Caribbean) was nurtured on cane-sap and the oceanic breeze of Jamaica. Retired as the Director of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of West Indies, Adisa has lectured and read her work throughout the United States, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Germany, England and Prague, and has performed in Italy and Bosnia. An award-winning poet and prose writer Adisa has over sixteen titles to her credit, including the novel, It Begins With Tears (1997), which Rick Ayers proclaimed as one of the most motivational works for young adults. She has been a resident artist in internationally acclaimed residencies such as El Gounda (Egypt), Sacatar Institute (Brazil), McColl Center, (North Carolina) and Headlines Center for the Arts (California, USA). Opal Palmer Adisa’s work has been reviewed by Ishmael Reed, Al Young, and Alice Walker, who described her work as “solid, visceral, important stories written with integrity and love.”
For the last 23 years Opal was a distinguished professor at California College of the Arts. She has been a visiting professor at several universities including, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley and University of the Virgin Islands. Her poetry, stories, essays and articles on a wide range of subjects have been collected in over 400 journals, anthologies and other publications, including Essence Magazine. She has also conducted workshops in elementary through high school, museums, churches and community centers, as well as in prison and juvenile centers.
During her residency, Opal worked on a creative nonfiction piece reflecting on her father who passed many years ago. The collection is titled The Scent of My Father and is in three sections: his birth in Cuba; his return to Jamaica and life in Jamaica, including meeting and marrying her mother; and finally the author explores her relationship with him. Opal led "Writing What Writes You", a mixed genre workshop. On August 14th, 2022 Opal read "The Storytellers Return" on Radio Boise's "The Poetry Show." For her final event at Surel's Place, Opal read a passage from The Scent of My Father.