Past Events

Marcie R. Rendon is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, author, playwright, poet, and freelance writer. Also a community arts activist, Rendon supports other native artists / writers / creators to pursue their art, and is a speaker for colleges and community groups on Native issues, leadership, writing.

She is an award-winning author of a fresh new murder mystery series, and also has an extensive body of fiction and nonfiction works.

The creative mind behind Raving Native Theater, Rendon has also curated community created performances such as Art Is… Creative Native Resilience, featuring three Anishinaabe performance artists, which premiered on TPT (Twin Cities Public Television), June 2019.

Rendon was recognized as a 50 over 50 Change-maker by MN AARP and POLLEN in 2018. Rendon and Diego Vazquez received a 2017 Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship for their work with women incarcerated in county jails.

Click here to register

Sliding scale tuition ($20-$50); scholarships are also available

In this workshop, we will engage in writing exercises (and a short theatrical creation) which will demonstrate how to bring characters to life. Bring paper, pens, pencils, and/or your laptop, imagination and bravery.

Recommended for writers of prose (fiction or nonfiction) and folks who write for theater, though all curious and open writers are welcome.

Marcie R. Rendon is an enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, author, playwright, poet, and freelance writer. Also a community arts activist, Rendon supports other native artists / writers / creators to pursue their art, and is a speaker for colleges and community groups on Native issues, leadership, writing.

She is an award-winning author of a fresh new murder mystery series, and also has an extensive body of fiction and nonfiction works.

The creative mind behind Raving Native Theater, Rendon has also curated community created performances such as Art Is… Creative Native Resilience, featuring three Anishinaabe performance artists, which premiered on TPT (Twin Cities Public Television), June 2019.

Rendon was recognized as a 50 over 50 Change-maker by MN AARP and POLLEN in 2018. Rendon and Diego Vazquez received a 2017 Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship for their work with women incarcerated in county jails.

From H Murray Valentine (workshop facilitator) : During the 2020 lockdown, my friends and I began playing zoom boggle.  We challenged one another to create songs, poems, and art based on our collective words.There were no strict rules, and we didn't play to win. We played to delight one another and to keep creating despite the  unknown. Since then I've made many boggle poems and songs and found it  to be a good antidote for writer's block.

H Murray Valentine is an artist, writer, and diviner living in the  Driftless Region. He believes in the healing art of nonsense. Find him on the web at hmurrayvalentine.net or on instagram @inherentquerent

Click here to register

$10-50 sliding scale tuition, scholarships are available

A public sonnet competition presented in collaboration with the Viroqua Shakespeare Festival

Calling all fans of poetry to join us for the first-ever Sonnet Competition at the Viroqua Shakespeare Festival before Saturday's performance of The Tempest!

Any and all are welcome to participate as a competitor and/or an audience member.

Cash prizes awarded in two prize categories: original sonnets and sonnets authored by others.

(Subcategories include: best use of metaphor and imagery, best performed presentation, most Shakespearean, least Shakespearean, best memorized delivery).

Come, grab some popcorn, tacos, or ice cream from the festival's food vendors
and find your seat to hear local poets and wordsmiths serve up metered
rhymes and compete for prizes!

Free and open to the public. Bring your own lawn chair or blanket.

From sonnet-curious to sonneteer in two hours!

In this workshop, we’ll explore a selection of sonnets from Elizabethan to

contemporary before participants dig in to the creative process of drafting

and crafting their own sonnets. We’ll provide exercises, prompts and

themes to help guide you in your process. All levels in all genres welcome,

from seasoned poets to first-time writers.

Two weeks after the workshop, workshop participants and the general public are

invited to compete in the Sonnet Slam on Saturday, June 28th at 5pm at the

Viroqua Shakespeare Festival for spirited literary delight and cash prizes!

(Food and music and a production Shakespeare’s The Tempest of will also

be available!).

Facilitated by franciszka voeltz

To register for this event, click here.

$20-50 Sliding Scale, Scholarships are Available (Please email driftlesswritingcenter@gmail.com to inquire about scholarships)

Driftless Writing Center and five Vernon County public libraries are delighted to host the 9th Annual Vernon County Reads adult reading program, featuring Wisconsin author Beth Amos —also known as Annelise Ryan and Allyson K. Abbott—at the Westby Performing Arts Center.

Residents are encouraged to visit their local public library to explore Beth Amos's, Monster Hunter Mystery series (written as Annelise Ryan). 

The event on August 14th is  free of charge and will feature a presentation by Beth Amos, followed by a book signing where  copies of her works will be available for purchase. This event is made possible by Vernon County Libraries and the Driftless Writing Center.

It’s what we all dream of  hearing when someone reads our work: “I just couldn’t put it down!” But how does a writer build the quality of narrative momentum into a piece of fiction or nonfiction? What strategies can we learn from published work that might unlock ideas for our own pages? In this workshop, we’ll look at several examples that demonstrate propulsive action and story. We’ll consider how plot, character, and POV work together to ensure a  driving impetus in fiction, memoir, and creative nonfiction. In-class writing exercises as well as discussion of texts will give participants the chance to understand and practice how “page turners” become reality. Bring a notebook or your laptop, and let’s gain momentum together.

To register, click here.

Sliding scale tuition ($20-$50); scholarships are also available

Emily Gray Tedrowe is the author of three novels, The Talented Miss Farwell (HarperCollins 2020), Blue Stars (St. Martin’s Press 2015), and Commuters (Harper  Perennial, 2010). Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in  Story Quarterly, swamp pink, The Rumpus, Crab Orchard Review, and other  magazines. One story won an Illinois Arts Council award and another was  named a finalist in the 2024 Zoetrope fiction contest. Tedrowe has been  awarded fellowships at Ragdale, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and the  Virginia Center for the Arts. She has taught literature and writing at  several universities in Chicago and New York. Tedrowe is also a  bookseller at Chicago’s first and currently only unionized independent  bookstore, Seminary Co-op Books.

About Tedrowe's novel,The Talented Miss Farwell: 

Catch Me If You Can meets Patricia Highsmith in this “stylish” (New York Times Book Review) page-turner of greed and obsession, survival and self-invention that is a piercing character study of one unforgettable female con artist.

At the end of the 1990s, with the art market finally recovered from its disastrous collapse, Miss Rebecca Farwell has made a killing at  Christie’s in New York City, selling a portion of her extraordinary art  collection for a rumored 900 percent profit. Dressed in couture YSL,  drinking the finest champagne at trendy Balthazar, Reba, as she’s known, is the picture of a wealthy art collector. To some, the elusive Miss  Farwell is a shark with outstanding business acumen. To others, she’s a heartless capitalist whose only interest in art is how much she can make.

But a thousand miles from the Big Apple, in the small town of Pierson, Illinois, Miss Farwell is someone else entirely—a quiet single woman  known as Becky who still lives in her family’s farmhouse, wears sensible  shoes, and works tirelessly as the town’s treasurer and controller.

No one understands the ins and outs of Pierson’s accounts better than Becky; she’s the last one in the office every night, crunching the  numbers. Somehow, her neighbors marvel, she always finds a way to get  the struggling town just a little more money. What Pierson doesn’t see—and can never discover—is that much of that money is shifted into a separate account that she controls, “borrowed” funds used to finance her  art habit. Though she quietly repays Pierson when she can, the business  of art is cutthroat and unpredictable.

But as Reba Farwell’s deals get bigger and bigger, Becky Farwell’s debt to Pierson spirals out of control. How long can the talented Miss Farwell  continue to pull off her double life?

If you would like to read at the open mic, please send an email to driftlesswritingcenter@gmail.com with the subject line: IN-PERSON OPEN MIC, and include your name and contact information. Please prepare to read no more than 5 minutes of material.

Driftless Writing Center and five Vernon County public libraries are delighted to host the 8th Annual Vernon County Reads adult reading program, featuring Wisconsin author Jennifer Chiaverini at the Westby Performing Arts Center.

Residents are encouraged to visit their local public library to explore Chiaverini’s works, including her latest release from the Elm Creek Quilts series,The Museum of Lost Quilts. Chiaverini has published thirty-three novels including critically acclaimed historical fiction and the Elm Creek Quilts series.

The event on November 20th is free of charge and will feature a  presentation by Jennifer Chiaverini, followed by a book signing where  copies of her works will be available for purchase.

Click Here to Register

In this generative writing workshop, we'll read and discuss brief  excerpts of poetry and prose, and we'll use those discussions to inform  our generative writing exercises. This class is adaptable to any genre, including hybrid writing, and participants will have the option to work  on one longer piece or several shorter pieces. Participants are also  welcome to bring a draft of a work-in-progress to edit and grow! We will  focus on language, POV, character/conflict, setting, sound, and form.  Everyone can expect to walk away with some new writing and fresh ideas  on how to keep going. Writers of all levels welcome. 

Margaret Yapp is the author of Green for Luck (EastOver  Press, 2024). She works as the managing editor at Prompt Press and runs  Rampage Party Press. You can read more at Margaret’s website which is  margaret yapp dot com / instagram @bigbabymarg.

Keith Pilapil Lesmeister is the author of the fiction chapbook Mississippi River Museum (WTAW Press, 2023) and the story collection We Could’ve Been Happy Here (MG Press, 2017). He's a founding editor of Cutleaf, a literary journal. More info at keithlesmeister.com.

Margaret Yapp is from Iowa City, Iowa. She works as the managing editor at  Prompt Press and runs Rampage Party Press, an ongoing hand-printed  broadside project and poetry magazine. She has an MFA in poetry from the  Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is currently an MFA candidate at the  University of Iowa Center for the Book. Her debut book of poems, Green for Luck,  is out now from EastOver Press. You can read more at Margaret’s website  which is margaret yapp dot com / instagram @bigbabymarg.

Keith Pilapil Lesmeister is the author of the fiction chapbook Mississippi River Museum (WTAW Press, 2023) and the story collection We Could’ve Been Happy Here (MG Press, 2017). His fiction has appeared in American Short Fiction, december magazine, Gettysburg Review, New Stories from the Midwest, North American Review, Redivider, SLICE, Terrain.org, and many others. His nonfiction has appeared in The Good Men Project, River Teeth, Sycamore Review, Tin House Open Bar, Water~Stone Review, and elsewhere. He received his M.F.A. from the Bennington Writing Seminars and serves as editor of Cutleaf. A 2023-25 Rural Regenerator Fellow through Springboard for the Arts, he currently lives in Iowa’s Driftless region.

Sign Up to read at the open mic!
If you would like to read during the open mic portion, please email the Driftless Writing Center at driftlesswritingcenter@gmail.com with the subject line “in-person open mic” to sign up for a 5-minute slot.  This is an in-person event.

Click here to register.

Those of us who consider ourselves more “organic” writers might hate the idea of knowing where we’re going—the journey to find out can be so dramatic or romantic! But it’s good practice to play with the idea of writing  toward a predetermined ending, a process which may reveal some new ways to order our thinking, refine our writing process, and to expand our creativity.

Recommended for writers of prose (fiction or nonfiction) and hybrid shorter forms or writers that would like to experiment with those forms in this workshop.

Sliding scale tuition ($20-$50); scholarships are also available