12:30 p.m. ~ Writing Workshop with Joyce Dyer
“The Pen in the Doctor’s Bag: Writing Your Way Through Illness”
(Registration required - limited to 15 participants - This workshop is now filled.)
This workshop will focus on the role of personal writing in the lives of individuals who are dealing with sickness and ill-health in any capacity—as patient, physician, nurse, daughter, spouse. We will quickly dispense with the notion that the function of “illness memoir” is to feed the culture’s craving for sensationalism, self-help, and pathology. Returning to the true roots of personal writing, we will explore its robust capacity to lead us toward greater understanding of ourselves and others; to help us speak with more honest voices and be less afraid of exposing our fears and insecurities; to return us to our experiences and memories in order to reflect on what they have meant; to assure us that the experience of illness is the central experience of humanity, and therefore never a trivial moment in its literature; to let us consider, as Lauren Slater would have us, that writing about illness is not just a means of therapy, for ourselves or for those we write about, “not a prescription but a description, offered not to cure but to accompany.” The first hour of the workshop will be spent talking about the readings participants will be provided ahead of time—not only the ideas they contain, but also literary features that distinguish them from academic nonfiction. During the second hour, we will use the digital projector to highlight and admire excerpts from the samples participants sent prior to the workshop. Participants will receive readings and will need to submit a short personal essay (1,000-3,000 words) in which they discuss, very reflectively, some physical or psychiatric illness of their own, of a patient, or of a friend or family member.
Lindsay-Crane Center for Writing and Literature
2:30 p.m. ~ Refreshments
Mahan House
3 p.m. ~ Writing Workshop with Rita Charon
“Writing our Way toward Care: Creative Writing in Clinical Settings”
(Registration required - limited to 20 participants - This workshop is now filled)
Many of us in humanities and medicine have encouraged clinicians, patients, and students to write in clinical settings to clarify what we know about specific patients and to strengthen the clarifying equipment itself. Of late, my teaching revolves not around evidently clinically salient writing but writing in the shadow of other great texts. In this workshop, we will have the time to do several primary-process writing exercises and to share among ourselves what we write. We might write in the shadow of the first page of To the Lighthouse, or Sharon Old’s poem about the homeless earth, or a paragraph by Sir Thomas Browne. By the end of two hours, we all will have beheld some ravishing uses of words, and by our very beholding will be that much more attuned to our own and our colleagues’ sense of beauty and crisis. We will demonstrate for ourselves the capacity of writing to reach across gulfs and to create mutually transforming bonds among us.
Garfield Meeting House
5:30 p.m. ~ Dinner with Author, Richard Preston
(Registration required)
Join author of The Hot Zone, Richard
Preston for a three course meal.
Kennedy Center Brown-Fall Room
7 p.m. ~ An Evening with Richard Preston
(Registration required)
Hayden Auditorium
8 p.m. ~ Book Signing with Author Richard Preston
Purchase copies of Richard Preston’s book and
get them signed by the author himself!
Hayden Auditorium
9:30 a.m. ~ Continental Breakfast
(Registration required)
Pritchard Room, Hiram College Library
10 a.m. ~ “Looking Backward: Literature and Medicine from
the Past to the Present”
Roundtable Discussion
(Registration required)
Join Center founders, Dr. Carol Donley and Dr. Martin Kohn as they lead a discussion about the past, 20 years of literature and medicine.
Pritchard Room, Hiram College Library
12 p.m. ~ Luncheon
(Registration required)
Kennedy Center Dix Dining Hall
1:30 p.m. ~ “The Deep and Transformative Companionship
of the Word, or How We All Became Friends”
Keynote Address by Rita Charon
(Registration required)
Rita Charon will give a keynote address on
the state of literature and medicine.
Kennedy Center Ballroom
2:30 p.m. ~ Refreshments
Kennedy Center Reception Gallery
3 p.m. ~ “Looking Forward: An Open Forum on the
Future of Literature and Medicine”
(Registration required)
Continue discussions with Rita Charon and the
Center’s staff and alumni about the present and future roles
of literature and medicine.
Pritchard Room, Hiram College Library
5 p.m. ~ “Luis” Performed by Verb Ballets
(Registration required)
Regionally renowned, Verb Ballets, recreates
Eric Coble's adaptation of Richard Selzer’s
story, “Luis,” with dance.
Hayden Auditorium
6:30 p.m. ~ Dinner Honoring Dr. Carol Donley and
Dr. Martin Kohn
(Registration required)
Toast the Center’s founders with dinner and
reflections.
Krabill Garden, Hiram College Library
To learn how you can support this center contact:Laura Gorretta, Associate Director of Development |
To find out more about center programming contact:Colleen Fried, Professor of Chemistry Director of the Center and Herbert L. and Pauline Wentz Andrews Professor of Biomedical Humanities Brittany Jackson, Assistant Director of the Center 330.569.5380 |