Registration now open for free Book Fest workshops

Online registration is now available for three Nebraska Book Festival workshops for aspiring writers. Participants will discuss writing techniques and receive expert feedback from authors Timothy Schaffert, Jim Reese, Matt Mason, Dwaine Spieker and Jeff Lacey. The full-day festival, free and open to the public, will be held May 21 in downtown Lincoln. Workshop seating is limited and advance registration is recommended. Register online at http://bookfestival.nebraska.gov/2011/workshops.aspx through May 15. Timothy Schaffert will lead a morning workshop, “Geographies of Fiction,” at nuVibe Juice and Java, 126 North 14th Street, beginning at 10:15 a.m. He will offer writing exercises and discuss how writers use place to portray character, further the plot, and enhance story and theme. Schaffert, a fourth-generation Nebraskan, is the author of four novels, most recently “The Coffins of Little Hope.” Three of his novels have been set in the landscape of his family’s central Nebraska farm. His work has been a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and an Indie Next pick from the American Booksellers Association. He teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, directs the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference and the (downtown) Omaha lit fest, and serves as digital development editor for “Prairie Schooner.” Jim Reese will lead an afternoon workshop, “Get Published Now,” at the Nebraska State Historical Society’s Nebraska History Museum, 131 Centennial Mall North, beginning at 1:30 p.m. Workshop participants will discuss methods and new ideas on how to get published in today’s market. Reese is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Great Plains Writers' Tour at Mount Marty College in Yankton, South Dakota. His poetry and prose have been widely published in “New York Quarterly,” “Poetry East,” “Prairie Schooner,” and elsewhere. His new book, “ghost on 3rd,” was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Reese is Editor-in-Chief of “Paddlefish” and has been the National Endowment for the Arts' Writer-in-Residence at the Yankton Federal Prison Camp since 2008. Matt Mason, Dwaine Spieker and Jeff Lacey will join together to lead a poetry-writing workshop, “Lightning Writing Prompts,” at the Nebraska History Museum, beginning at 1:30 p.m. Mason won the 2007 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry for “Things We Don’t Know We Don't Know,” is executive director of the Nebraska Writers Collective, coordinates Nebraska's annual “Poetry Out Loud” contest, and has led workshops for the U.S. State Department in Nepal and Belarus. Spieker won the 2010 Nebraska Book Award for Poetry for “Garden of Stars,” teaches literature and writing at Wayne High School, and received two National Endowment for the Humanities grants to participate in their “Summer Seminars for Schoolteachers” program. Lacey won the Oscar C. Macellaio Poetry Prize, was recognized by the American Academy of Poets, and recently edited “The Loren Eiseley Reader Teacher’s Guide.” To learn more about the festival and its featured authors, visit bookfestival.nebraska.gov or contact Mary Jo Ryan, festival coordinator, Mary Jo Ryan, 402-471-3434, 800-307-2665. The Nebraska Book Festival is presented by the Nebraska Center for the Book, Nebraska Humanities Council and Nebraska Library Commission, with additional support from the Nebraska Arts Council, Nebraska Cultural Endowment, Nebraska State Historical Society, Nebraska Writers Collective, A Novel Idea Bookstore, nuVibe Juice and Java, Nebraska Repertory Theatre, and University of Nebraska Press.