Poetry and Fiction of Place

Jeffrey Lamar Coleman

In this workshop we will focus on ways to capture the spirit, history, and significance of Southern Maryland in poetry and fiction. The session will be driven by a brief brainstorming session about how the region’s past, present, or future; either real or imagined, speaks to us and how we can use the region as inspiration in our writing. Published works of literature with an emphasis on Southern Maryland will be discussed and used as examples during the brainstorming session. Subject matter for workshop participants can consist of the region’s natural environment, human presence, specific buildings or sites, hometowns, or culture, among other ideas. Attendees will have time to start new poems and works of fiction during the workshop. We will conclude by sharing our drafts and discussing ways to strengthen them in the future. This workshop is designed for all levels of writers.

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Jeffrey Lamar Coleman is a professor of English at St. Mary's College of Maryland where he teaches creative writing and 20th and 21st century literature. Coleman is also the editor of Words of Protest, Words of Freedom: Poetry of the American Civil Rights Movement and Era, author of Spirits Distilled: Poems, and associate editor of the Journal of Hip Hop Studies. His most recent creative and scholarly work can be found in Aunt Chloe: A Journal of Artful Candor, The Skinny Poetry Journal, Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience, and The Black Intellectual Tradition: African American Thought in the Twentieth Century