Writers of Kern

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September Featured Speaker – Carla Martin

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This workshop will focus on using visual mediums as a source of inspiration.

In this workshop participants will:

  • Examine the use of paintings
  • Listen to the life stories of the artists and absorb their colors, shapes, and messages.
  • Write using a visual prompt
  • If you’d like to, share your work

Carla Joy Martin is a poet, pastel artist and piano instructor. After living in New York, Scotland and Pasadena, she found herself in Bakersfield and has been here for thirty years now. She obtained her MA in English Literature from Stanford and enjoys promoting the arts in Bakersfield. She hosts the Dukes Memorial Concerts as well as co-hosts the First Friday Open Mic Nights with Portia Choi. She published her first poetry chapbook, A Kaleidoscope of Love, in the middle of the pandemic. A member of Writers of Kern for many years, Carla is the current Critique Group Chair. She can’t thank WOK enough for all they have done to nurture her talents.

Hope to see you there!

$15 for members and $18 for nonmembers. Click here to register for the event.

August Featured Speaker – Cyn Bermudez

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Workshop title: In Verse: Building Stores in Tiny Spaces

This workshop will focus on poetry as a narrative technique and method for storytelling. Topics include novels-in-verse, prose poetry, and the narrative poem. Participants will read and discuss the vignette. Participants will also read, write, and discuss narrative poetry.

In this workshop participants will:

Examine different examples of narrative poetry, including novels written in verse and the vignette.
Learn how to world and character build in this compact form.
Learn how to build sensory detail and create unforgettable characters.
Write a short narrative poem.

Cyn Bermudez is an author, poet, and artist living in California. She is the author of the Brothers series, And the Moon Follows, The Dragons Club, and more. She writes in various genres: general, science fiction, fantasy, weird, horror, and more. She has short stories, poetry, and art published in various literary journals, magazines, and anthologies: Perihelion SF, Middle Planet, Building Red: Mission Mars (Walrus Publishing), and more. Cyn is an active member of her local writing community. She enjoys other creative outlets like photography, sketching, digital art, and painting. Cyn loves spending time with her family and friends, baking, crafting, and do-it-yourself projects. Visit her website for more information. www.cynbermudez.com

Cyn has two novels written in verse: The Dragons Club (West 44) and Graffiti Heart. Her narrative poetry has been published in various magazines and lit journals: Strangelet, Moledro, Devolution Z, and more.

Social Media Stay Connected!

artist and illustratorInstagram@cynb.art
authorTwitter, Facebook, & Instagram@cyncbermudez
editor, lit journalTwitter, Facebook, & Instagram@planisphereq
book trailers, readings, tutorialsYouTubeCyn B

Click here to register for the event.

July Featured Speaker – Donnee Patrese

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Workshop Title:  The Page Turner Method: How not to Bore your Readers and Build Tension.

Do you ever worry about boring your readers? With lackluster dialogue and too much description, will people turn the page to the next chapter or put your book down for good?

How do you keep an audience interested?

Well, I have a page turning method that will not only keep your audience engaged but will also help you build tension in your novel or non-fiction piece. I’ll show what can make readers utterly bored, give tips on how to add tension and best practices on how to keep readers interested.

Purchase Tickets Here: $15 Members and $18 Nonmembers

Bio:

A spicy romance and romantic suspense novelist, blogger, short story writer, youtuber and speaker, Donnée Patrese was born and raised in Gary, IN where her love for writing blossomed. She worked as a Journalist at The Post Tribune and the Indianapolis Recorder for 2 years and won an award with the Indiana Association of Black Journalist before deciding to be a full-time novelist.

 Lover of books and a slave to the wonders of her mind, she has published seven books through First Draft Publishing, including the Prohibited Trilogy, Diary of a Wanted Woman and Burned: Deadly Desires.

She has a BA in Journalism from Butler University in Indianapolis, IN and is a lifelong member of Delta Delta Delta Sorority. In 2012, Donnée Patrese moved to Bakersfield, CA where she and her husband raise their beautiful daughters.

Social Media Links

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DonneePatrese

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/donnee_patrese/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Donnee_Patrese

Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@donnee_patrese

Website

www.donneepatrese.com

Link to my books on Amazon.

Email: donnee@firstdraftpublishing.com

Gaining Substance by Composing in Layers

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Stanley Kunitz, in an essay called “The Layers” in Next-to-Last Things, writes: “One of the great resources of the poetic imagination is its capacity to mount thought on thought, event on event, image on image, time on time, a process that I term ‘layering.’ The life of the mind is largely a buried life.” Just so, the literary products of the mind are composed through this same process of layering. Scenes, stories, and characters with depth and authenticity are rarely, if ever, created in a single burst. Like great paintings, they come to life bit by bit, as the artist approaches from different angles, bringing a different focus with each pass. In this workshop, we’ll deconstructing the opening of my novel Glorious Boy to see how the scene was built, layer by layer.

Aimee Liu is the bestselling author of the novels Glorious Boy, Flash House, Cloud Mountain, and Face, as well as thememoirs Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders and Solitaire. Her books include a Literary Guild Super Release and have been published in more than twelve languages and serialized in Good Housekeeping. She also is the editor of Alchemy of the Word: Writers Talk About Writing, and Restoring Our Bodies, Reclaiming Our Lives: Guidance and Reflections on Recovery from Eating Disorders. Her articles have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Ms., Literary Hub, The Rumpus, The Los Angeles Review of Books and other publications. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars and taught for more than 15 years in Goddard College’s low-residency MFA in Creative Writing Program. More at aimeeliu.net

Register for Aimee’s workshop here:
In Person Tickets
Zoom Tickets

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes. One of the most popular and critically respected American poets of his generation, Frost was honored frequently during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry.