VARIATIONS ON A THEME: POETRY & IMAGE CHAPBOOK DESIGN Chapbooks available; click on images below.
Ages 16-29
Fall 2020, Online
In this distance learning workshop, student fellows will write and design individual books of poems—chapbooks, illustrating them with original photographs. A chapbook is a short collection of poems or stories, typically addressing a single theme. They are a way to celebrate and to share personal creative visions, an art as well as a literary form. Fellows will need to be both serious writers and serious photographers for this workshop, writing one or more poems a week, and creating images to accompany them. Images might complement or counterpoint texts, responding to the central theme, and enhancing the collection. Fellows will be introduced to traditional and newly invented poetic forms, and to the work of contemporary poets and photographers. And they’ll learn the basics of book design, exploring published chapbooks, both physical and virtual. Through consultation with the instructors, each will develop their own, individual design, experiencing the unique connections between self-expression, poetic and photographic forms, and the function of a book as means of communication. Each fellow will finish the workshop with a hardcopy chapbook, and their work will also be shared through a virtual exhibition and on the program website. Limited to 8 student fellows.
Jalynn Harris is a poet, educator, press founder, and editor from Woodlawn, the greatest suburb in Baltimore. She earned her M.F.A. from the University of Baltimore. Her first chapbook, Exit Thru the Afro, is a future museum of Black queer artifacts.
Sarah Miller is a photographer, raised in Baltimore and currently living and working in New York City. She was selected for participation in the Eddie Adams Workshop in 2018 and has shot for such news outlets as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Malkah Bell is a graduate of Morgan State University's SWAN (Screenwriting & Animation) program, receiving her BFA in Television and Media Writing. Since childhood she has had a love for writing and uses film as a her canvas to tell moving stories.
