IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Veterans Writing Workshop and Book Project coming to campus
A workshop and book project that encourages veterans and their families to write about their wartime and lifetime experiences is coming to East Carolina University in April.
The Veterans Writing Workshop will be held 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, April 9 in Room 221 in Mendenhall Student Center.
“Writing narratives can provide a holistic understanding of life experience,” said Tom Douglass, ECU associate professor of English and organizer for the event. “We’re providing the support to do that.”
Hour-long breakout sessions will focus on writing technique and methods including demonstrations and strategies for visual expression. The sessions will cover a wide range of storytelling including how to write a screenplay, non-fiction journal writing, poetic narrative, photography and collage.
Session leaders will be Kevin Powers, PEN Hemingway Award winner and combat Iraq War veteran; Shelby Stephenson, North Carolina poet laureate; John Hoppenthaler, poet and ECU associate professor of English; Robert Siegel, playwright and ECU associate professor of English; and Linda Fox, photographer and ECU alumna.
“We’re just here to help people feel more confident to articulate their experience and thread the narrative from here to there,” Douglass said.
The Veterans Book Project – a weeklong bookmaking project – will begin April 6 and conclude April 13 in Room 2222 on the second floor of Joyner Library.
Juliet Madsen, a veteran of the Iraq War, made her book at the Veterans Book Workshop in Colorado Springs, Colorado in September 2011. Madsen said she made the book for her husband and children. “I want them to see and understand that I really do realize that I am not who I was. I want them to have an understanding of what happened,” she wrote.
The hands-on workshop will be led by Veterans Book Project founder Monica Haller, a visual artist who has worked with veterans across the country since 2005. Each participant will make a book with archival items, digital images, emails, journal entries or writings generated at the workshop. Examples of books can be seen at www.veteransbookproject.com/the-books/.
A collection of more than 50 books and photographs produced by combat and non-combat veterans or their families will be on display in Faulkner Gallery during the workshop.
On Thursday, April 7, an open forum will be held at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of the East Carolina Heart Institute at ECU. Speakers will be Haller, Kevin Powers, author of “The Yellow Birds” and “Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting,” and Dr. Fred Foote, retired U.S. Navy neurologist and leader of the Epidaurus Project for holistic care at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Foote spearheaded the initiative to create a model healing environment for Wounded Warriors of the Iraq War and other service members. Foote also is the author of “Medic Against Bomb.”
Haller, Powers and Foote will talk about their experiences and what they have learned about the challenges facing returning veterans.
The 2016 Veterans Writing Workshop is sponsored by Operation Re-Entry North Carolina, the ECU Office of Student Transitions, the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences, Pirate Veterans and the ECU Contemporary Writers Series. To register or for more information, visit http://www.ecu.edu/veteranswritingworkshop.
Phil Mason, who served in the Vietnam War from 1965 to 1968, made his book in 2011. “I really enjoyed writing this book and hope that it may help those that read it to understand a little about the hidden memories and constant torments that so many veterans live with and deal with throughout their lives.”