Craft Talk Sneak Preview

I will not be blogging tomorrow night, as it’s party time for Lost Crossings. But here is a sneak preview of the craft talk Shane and I will present at the public lecture tomorrow evening:

SHANE – Thank you:
Crimson Laurel Gallery, The Design Gallery, Alessa Leming, Gina Phillips and Great Meadows, Jean McGlaughlin, and the Canipe family…

Transition – Katey invited Shane to be the photographer

KATEY – How I started:
1. Simple infatuation/Honeycutt Bridge
2. Research for Our State
3. Collaboration:
a. Field work, typical day—whole experience, both sides of bridge
b. weekly meetings to get the work out there
c. Fundraising
d. Printing and framing
e. Writing and revising

Katey’s reflection:
1. Struggled some with what I had to offer as an outsider, what I could write that would make a contribution…found an entry point
2. Ran into limitations with my own research skills and found I was most interested in the experience itself…contemplative
3. How this work fits into the subgenres of Nonfiction:
a. Immersion or obsession writing is journalistic in nature, but puts the “I” voice or the narrator directly into the story. Examples include: Into the Wild, The Orchid Thief, A Year of Living Biblically, The Bookseller of Kabul, and Eat, Pray, Love. While concept books such as these can sometimes be viewed as gimmicky, when they are well-written they both inform readers and invite them to consider larger questions.
b. The meditative essay uses the self as a starting point, then it escapes into another world for a moment but always has a way of coming back to real time in the end. There is almost always the presence of a question and a sustained moment of stillness. Authors who do this include Robert Vivian and Annie Dillard.
c. “Contemplative conservation”

Shane’s reflection:
{He’s working on it…}

Close: Q&A, thanks