Workshops

Learn to unlock the rhythmic architecture, drama, and music that are the integral aspects of a memorable performance with one of the country’s finest poetic performers! This workshop will offer exercises to draw out the rhythm in the public delivery of your poems and will highlight bedrock techniques of public speaking. You’ll practice strategies for interpreting the complex ideas of a poem for an audience and will receive guidance in finding the hidden singer within. Practical topics will include microphone techniques, breathing exercises, posture, projection, and much more. This workshop is designed to benefit the beginner as well as the accomplished writer and arm each writer with a bag of tricks to charm every crowd they encounter.

Each participant will bring two pieces to share, and will receive performance feedback from the instructor and the group. Any work deemed exemplary will be considered for publication in The Asheville Poetry Review.

About the Instructor

Keith Flynn is the award-winning author of eight books, including six collections of poetry: most recently Colony Collapse Disorder (Wings Press, 2013) and The Skin of Meaning (Red Hen Press, 2020), and two collections of essays, entitled The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing(Writer’s Digest Books, 2007), and Prosperity Gospel: Portraits of the Great Recession (RedHawk Publications, 2021). From 1984-1999, he was lyricist and lead singer for the nationally acclaimed rock band The Crystal Zoo, which produced three albums: Swimming Through Lake Eerie, Pouch, and the spoken-word and music compilation Nervous Splendor. His latest album is Keith Flynn & The Holy Men, LIVE at Diana Wortham Theatre. He is the Executive Director and producer of the TV and radio show, “LIVE at White Rock Hall,” (www.liveatwhiterockhall.com) and Animal Sounds Productions, both which create collaborations between writers and musicians in video and audio formats. Flynn is founder and managing editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, which began publishing in 1994.

“Scene in North Carolina” with Wiley Cash

June 22 & 29 and July 6 & 13, 2:00-3:00pm
Online via Zoom

In this virtual lecture series, New York Timesbestselling novelist and North Carolina native Wiley Cash will break down the craft of scene-making in novels and short stories by North Carolina writers, including Charles Frazier, Jill McCorkle, Jason Mott, Ron Rash, and others. Each class will end with a writing exercise based on that day’s discussion that will help each participant build more effective scenes in their own work. The sessions will be recorded in case any participants have to miss a session.

About the Instructor

Wiley Cash is the New York Times bestselling author of four novels. His short stories and essays have appeared in The Oxford American, Garden & Gun, Our State Magazine, and other publications, and his fiction has been adapted for the stage and film. Cash’s novel When Ghosts Come Home (2021) was a national bestseller and an Indie Next Pick. In 2017, The Last Ballad was named an American Library Association Book of the Year and a Chicago Public Library Best Book. The novel received the Southern Book Prize, the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, the Weatherford Award, and the Bloodroot Mountain Prize. His second novel, This Dark Road to Mercy, was a national bestseller and received the Crime Writers Association’s Novel of the Year award in the UK. It was a finalist for both the Edgar Award for Best Novel and the Southern Book Prize. Cash’s debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, won the Thomas Wolfe Book Prize, the Maine Reader’s Choice Award, the Southern Book Prize, the Crook’s Corner Book Prize, the Appalachian Writers Association’s Book of the Year, and the Crime Writers Association’s Debut of the Year in the UK. Cash has received the Pat Conroy Legacy Award from the Southern Independent Booksellers’ Alliance, the Mary Frances Hobson Prize from Chowan University, and the Appalachian Heritage Prize from Shepherd University.