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Put your thoughts on paper, partake of monthly workshops, and demonstrate that you won’t bleed to death under an assault of friendly criticism and you’re likely to become a Great Rift Writer. See our calendar for upcoming workshops, or contact our designated receiver of emails for more details.
CALENDAR OF EVENTS
GRW WORKSHOP • 7:00 PM • Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Bonneville County Extension Office
Upstairs Conference Room
2925 Rollandet
Idaho Falls, Idaho
Contact Lynna at lynna.howard@mac.com for more information.
Homework for 01/21/2009 • Time Warp/Character Warp
Take a character from religious literature or from other literature and drop him/her into a modern landscape. For example, drop Lazarus into Manhattan, Noah on Lake Powell, Joan of Arc at the Democratic Convention, Gabriel in Baghdad, Beowulf at Hayford Junction (train yard) in Chicago, or Bess (the landlord’s daughter who is loved by the Highwayman in the poem by Alfred Noyes) at a local gas station/convenience store. Or come up with your own Time Warp/Character Warp.
Previous assignments are posted in the Assignment Archive available on the website www.artmeetsadventure.com
We have extended the deadline for our Seven Deadly Virtues & Seven Saving Vices chapbook to February or March, 2009. Leslie Ovard will be scheduling a special meeting to lay out the chapbook. We’ll post the meeting here as soon as we have the details.
Bring at least six copies of work you want to share. Depending on the number of writers at the workshop, we will have about 10 to 20 minutes per person. If you have longer poems or prose pieces you want to workshop, you should choose an excerpt to present to the group. Writers can bring longer works for members to take home, but don't expect the entire piece to be covered in one workshop. Please include your name, phone number, and email address on each piece.
Future Great Rift Writers’ Workshops for 2009
February 18, 2009
TBA for 2009, please check back for meetings beyond February. We’ll discuss our 2009 schedule at the January 2009 meeting.
Contact us: Send email to lynna.howard@mac.com if you would like to attend an upcoming workshop and are not yet a member of Great Rift Writers.
Previous assignments are posted in the Assignment Archive. Seven Deadly Virtues & Seven Saving Vices is still in effect. See the Assignment Archive on the Great Rift Writers sub-page at www.artmeetsadventure.com for details. We plan to have our chapbook printed in 2009. Writers have until March 9, 2009 to come up with submissions. Bring submissions to a workshop, or send an electronic version to Lynna at lynna.howard@mac.com. Leslie Ovard is our editor for the project.
Photo of aspen grove above is by Leland Howard, ©2007
Contact us: Send email to lynna.howard@mac.com if you would like to attend an upcoming workshop or other event.
A reminder to everyone: It is time to pay dues for 2009. The dues are $25.00 per year. Leslie Ovard is acting as our treasurer for now, so please make checks payable to her. In the memo portion write "GRW MEMBERSHIP." You can bring cash or check to a GRW meeting, or mail payment to Lynna Howard at 441 Hummingbird Lane, Shelley, ID 83274 (Lynna's house is the GRW snail mail location). Prospective members can attend a couple of workshops first before deciding if they want to join or not
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Image at right is a painting of Bill Peters, one of the founding members of Great Rift Writers.
Poet, William J. Peters, born in Kellogg, Idaho is the fourth generation in his family to work for the Bunker Hill Company, one of the largest mining employers in the Silver Valley of the Coeur d’ Alenes. He taught 9th grade English for 25 years in Idaho Falls. He now invests his time in writing and working part-time in a bookstore. His first chapbook, Miner Moments, was published in 2004.
Image at left is of Leslie Ovard.
Poet and essayist, Leslie Park Ovard of Idaho Falls, studied creative writing at Lewis-Clark State College and has a Masters of English degree from Idaho State University.
Leslie's works have appeared in Talking River Review, Rendezvous and Connections.
Leslie is a Fishtrap writing conference fellow, and Great Rift Writers founding member. Leslie was the first "teacher" of the community college course in Idaho Falls that brought Great Rift Writers together. She is currently a Journal Article Specialist and Proposal Development Specialist for the Knowledge and Information Services at Idaho National Laboratory.
 Image at right is of Lynna Howard, a founding member of Great Rift Writers.
Lynna was born in New Mexico, lived in Idaho for several years, migrated to Alaska as a teenager, and settled in Idaho in 1995. She focuses on technical writing in the winter, and adventure travel writing in the summer. Lynna has three published books and is working on a fourth. Her book "Montana and Idaho's Continental Divide Trail" won a National Outdoor Book Award in 2000. Her most recently published poem was "Immigrant" which appeared in the 2008 issue of "Alehouse," a literary journal published in San Francisco.
Lynna's Published Books | Lynna Howard's homepage
Amanda Jackson is a member of Great Rift Writers, and the mother of two baby girls. From a small town in Wyoming, Amanda moved to Idaho Falls to expand her mind and push preconstructed boundaries. Pushing limitations is a work in progress.
Marla Trible, a founding member of Great Rift Writers.
For the past eight years, MARLA TRIBLE and Thomas, her spouse of 38 years, have resided at Volehollow, their acreage on the western outskirts of Idaho Falls. Here they tend to their gardens, youthful wildlife habitat, aged windbreaks and attendant critters. An Okie, schooled in Texas and Alaska, Marla has degrees in Mathematics and Geophysics. She has lived in seven states and been paid as a scientist, programmer, educator, editor and writer. Since retiring, she has focused on improving her skills with poetry and photography, while remaining active in Audubon, the Idaho Master Gardening Program and statewide weed and water issues.
Debu Majumdar is a member of Great Rift Writers, and the author of "From the Ganges to the Snake River: An East Indian in the American West" published by Caxton Press of Caldwell, Idaho.
 Image at left is of Judy Scheer, a founding member of Great Rift Writers.
Judy was invited to read her poem "Trump of God" at the International Society of Poets conference in Orlando in March, 2004. ISP even gave her money, 500 bucks—big money in the poetry universe. But you gotta love the "exquisite personalized Outstanding Achievement in Poetry Silver Award Cup" and Judy's Disney World heat rash more than the money. For more info about the ISP conference: http://poetry.com/poetscorner. Judy lives and works in Payette, Idaho, where she is also raising two above average children. Judy's self-described genre is the "way more angst than is normal" category. Judy's hobbies include worrying, feeling inadequate, obsessing on the unobtainable, and writing poems that would make her mother blush. Her poem "Punk Rock Girl" won an award from the magazine "Black Rock & Sage." To purchase T-shirts featuring "Punk Rock Girl" and other poems, see
http://www.cafepress.com/thinking_ts
Stefanie Davies is a member of Great Rift Writers. She works at the university in Pocatello, Idaho, and has a distinctive laugh everyone loves to hear.
Image at right is of Susan Seefeldt, a member of Great Rift Writers.
Susan McMinn Seefeldt writes poetry under the pen name of Susan McMartin, a tribute to her much loved 97-year-old grandmother. Susan grew up in West Texas, majored in Botany at university, married her best friend and Peace Corps returnee, Steve, then moved to North Idaho and the Palouse for 15 years. After a two-year sojourn in New Zealand, Susan and her family moved to Idaho Falls, and then to Fairbanks, Alaska. Susan and Steve, a range ecologist, have been married for 21 years, and have three daughters.
She has had two articles published in the award-winning journal "Home Education Magazine," and was a regular columnist for the New Zealand home schooling journal "Between Times" written for teens and their parents.
In addition to sharpening her skills as a poet with her fellow Great Rift Writers, Susan is working towards a degree in Library Science so that she can (a) start earning a paycheck again, and (b) "be the nice librarian" (according to two young friends who complained to her about a recent encounter with the other kind).
David Arlo Moss is a member of Great Rift Writers. He recently rejoined the workshops after serving a tour of duty in Iraq. His poetry sample, "Bear Butte," is posted on the GRW Poetry page. David and his family recently moved to Alaska.
Kathy Sanders is a founding member of Great Rift Writers, and was one of the original hosts of Open Mic Nights at Barnes & Noble in Idaho Falls. Several years ago, Kathy moved to Astoria, Oregon with her husband, Steve. She escaped her crop dust allergies and experienced hurricane-force winds in the bargain. She recently self-published the chapbook "From Cross to Crown" which can be found in several Christian bookstores in Oregon and Washington. Visit her blog at www.roughcutdiamonds.blogspot.com (a Christian blog site), or send email to kfsanders99@hotmail.com. An excerpt from Kathy's poetry appears on the Great Rift Writers poetry website page.
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