Creative Scene Investigation (CSI): A Generative All-Genre Creative Writing Lab with Jami Macarty

A two-day writing workshop at the Vancouver Police Museum 

Workshop instructor: Jami Macarty, MFA

November 18-19, 2017 1:00pm-4:00pm each day

What words put you at the scene of your story, memoir, poem? Who dun it? Writing a story, memoir, poem, etc. is a process, like crime scene investigation, that involves purposeful documentation the physical evidence of a scene to illuminate what happened and point to who did it.

In this weekend-long creative writing workshop, writers of all genres will be expert witnesses to their imaginations, conducting a series of forensic investigations with their word-flashlights, word-tweezers, word-sledge hammers, (if necessary to break through a wall to the point of origin for those screams or that terrible smell), and scalpel-pens to find and collect the word-evidence that reveals the DNA, fingerprints, and modus operandi for the characters in their stories, poems, and memoirs. 

By the end of this writing-packed, experiment-filled weekend, writers will have a notebook filled with fugitive memories, confessions, hot tips, and solid leads to follow into their stories, poems, and memoirs.

Writers of all backgrounds welcomed

New, experienced - Come one! Come all! To the writing laboratory 

About Jami

Jami Macarty is the author of Landscape of The Wait, a chapbook of poems focusing on her nephew, William’s car accident and year-long coma (Finishing Line Press, June 2017), and Mind of Spring, which won the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award (forthcoming, fall 2017). Former Executive Director of Tucson Poetry Festival (1996-2005), she teaches contemporary poetry and creative writing at Simon Fraser University, serves as a Poetry Ambassador for Vancouver’s Poet Laureate, Rachel Rose, is a Fresh Local Poet for Vancouver Park Board, edits of the online poetry journal The Maynard, and writes Peerings & Hearings–Occasional Musings on Arts in the City of Glass, a blog series for Anomaly (FKA Drunken Boat). A recipient of grants from Arizona Commission on the Arts, Banff Center, and BC Arts Council, among others; a Pushcart Prize nominee; a finalist for the 2017 Robert Kroetsch Award, and the winner of the 2016 Real Good Poem Prize (a 2,000 purse!), her poems appear in American and Canadian journals, including Arc Poetry Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Descant, Drunken Boat, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Prism international, Vallum: contemporary poetry, Verse Daily, and Volt.