From quick, 140-character tweets to e-mails, texts, blogs,
stories, poems and essays, opportunities abound for us
to put our thoughts and ideas in writing. To celebrate
the infinite variety of writing vehicles and styles, the
National Council of Teachers of English is sponsoring the
National Day on Writing Oct. 20. Eastern Michigan University,
along with schools, communities and individuals all over
the country, will be commemorating the day in their own
unique way.
 |
READING GOOD WRITING: Carolyn
Morrow,
a senior business
administration major from Gladstone,
Mich., reads a book about Abraham
Lincoln in Halle
Library recently.
Eastern Michigan University will
participate in the National Day on
Writing Oct.
20. A variety of writing
events are planned. |
"The idea behind the National Day on Writing is to have
writers from all walks of life contribute writing to the
National Council's virtual gallery and celebrate the writing
that people do all day," said Cathy Fleischer, an EMU professor
of English language and literature. Fleischer is co-coordinating
the event with Linda Adler-Kassner, a professor in the
same department.
Eastern Michigan will join in the celebration in grand
style with a full day of engaging writing activities, from
9 a.m. to 4 p.m., in the Student Center Ballroom. Students,
faculty, staff and community members are all welcome. Fleischer
is expecting as many as 2,000 people to participate in
EMU's event. Many instructors have already signed up to
bring their classes to National Day on Writing activities.
Students in first-year writing classes will experiment
with some of the activities as part of a class assignment.
Literature classes are planning to adapt some of the activities,
such as creating an erasure poem from a piece of literature.
This type of poem is created by erasing words from an existing
tex and arranging the new text into poetry form.
"We hope that everyone will recognize that they're all
writers and write all the time," said Fleischer. "We also
hope they'll see that writing is fun and feel inspired
to write more after the day is done."
To design an enticing array of activities for the day,
Fleischer and Adler-Kassner called on the creativity of
several groups and individuals, including the Eastern Michigan
Writing Project, 826michigan.org, EMU's Writing Center
and Writing Across the Curriculum program, faculty and
graduate students.
"Some locations are just submitting writing to the National
Gallery, but we decided to make it a big, splashy event," said
Fleischer.
Activities include:
- Writing Marathons: Writing marathons are occasions
for writers to write in a series of locations, experiencing
both what inspires them and what happens to their writing
when they compose in different contexts. Maps will be
available with several routes (long, short, varying stops),
along with directions on how to participate. Writers
will return to the Student Center Ballroom afterward
to share their writing and reflect on their experience.
- WritingCorps: Modeled after NPR's StoryCorps, WritingCorps
will invite participants to reflect (on audio or video)
on a piece of writing that is meaningful to them.
- Writing Activities: Stations throughout the Student
Center Ballroom will give writers an opportunity to try
out some short kinds of fun, lively and engaging writing.
- Roving Reporters: Writers will have
a chance to check out a Flip video camera and a "press
pass." They will
have 20 minutes to walk around campus to interview faculty,
students and staff about their writing practices.
- "Passports": Students will get "Passports" for the
day, complete with stamps for the various activities
in which they participated and stickers that say, "I
wrote at EMU." Learning Beyond the Classroom event credit
will be available.
- National Gallery: Submissions from
the National Day on Writing can be uploaded to the National
Gallery of Writing, a virtual gallery of work from across
the country. Eastern Michigan will have its own virtual
room in this gallery. Any of the writing (and podcasts
and videos) that EMU writers produce on this day can
be uploaded to this site.
For more information on EMU's National Day on Writing,
visit www.emich.edu/ndow/.
