Quilting Together Your Scraps and Pieces of Writing

INSTRUCTOR: Jessica Cole and Jamie Portwood
TIME: Sunday, May 19, 3:00–6:00 p.m. CST
PRICE: Early bird price: $45 for members, $60 for nonmembers. The deadline for early bird pricing is Monday, May 13. After Monday, May 13: $55 for members, $70 for nonmembers. Become a member here. Apply for a scholarship here.
LOCATION: Hybrid. Writespace, 1907 Sabine Street, #125, Houston, TX 77007 (map). This workshop is also available via Zoom.
LEVEL: All levels
CAP: 15

Anyone else have scraps of writing just sitting in the Google drive or an overstuffed notebook? Short pieces consisting of a single, sharply drawn memory or some lovely lines from a poem that was never finished. Do you have paragraphs from memoir pieces or stories that you just couldn’t delete because they are so true and truly beautiful?

What do you do with them all? They seem so random and disjointed?

These pieces do all have something in common; you wrote them and you like them, so we are going to have an old fashioned quilting bee. Through collective wisdom, mentor texts, generative exercises, and group sharing, we will seek out the colors, themes, patterns, and images and patch together these seemingly disparate scraps into a quilt of surpassing beauty. Will it be a poem? An essay? A hybrid piece that defies genre but hits the heart just right? Who knows?

Let’s find out together. Bring printed copies of your favorite scraps, blank 8X10 paper, tape, and a pair of scissors.

This workshop can be taken in person at the studio or online via Zoom.

This event is funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance. This project is generously funded by the Houston Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, and Mid-America Arts Alliance.

This project is generously funded by Mid-America Arts Alliance, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the state arts agencies of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas.