Press Release: Word Café Explores the Elasticity of Words
Open mike night for readings if you’re an author. That’s kind of cool.
Award winning poet and author and COCC’s 2007/2008 Scholar-in-Residence, Ellen Waterston, invites the community to the next Word Café to be held on Thursday, February 21, 7:00 p.m. at the COCC Barber Library. There is no admission fee and refreshments are served.
This, the thirteenth Word Café, will feature Brad Hills’ Innovation Theatre Works’ performance of “Yellow Cake”, a short story by former Bend resident Josh Beddingfield. Hills will direct the short play, which stars Vicki Pennock and Rod Dahl. The short story performance will be followed by a reading by local author and poet Suzanne Burns, at which point the mic will be turned over to COCC faculty, students and others for an open mic session. Waterston asks open mic participants to limit their reading to three minutes.
The Word Café was initiated by Judith Montgomery, the first scholar-in-residence who held the position in 2005/2006, and COCC Library Director David Bilyeu. The concept has continued, with each year’s scholar-in-residence adding his or her own inflection. Waterston states that her goal is to illustrate the amazing elasticity of the written word – from William Stafford to slam, from short story theater to cowboy poetry — as it adapts to different genres, forms and applications. She hopes this will encourage students to dabble, experiment and find out what interests them — and try it on the Word Café audience for size.
She is also encouraging students at COCC to participate in The Nature of Words Rising Star Creative Writing Competition for high school and college-age writers, recently announced for 2008, and will be explaining some incentives available to COCC students relative to the competition. “Come show what your sentences are made of,” Waterston challenges the students.
As part of her tenure as Scholar-In-Residence, Waterston also holds open office hours at the COCC library for students seeking advice on careers in writing or assistance on a creative writing project. For information call 541.330.4381.