As part of her project, “A Legacy of Voices,” 2022–24 Poet Laureate of Allegheny County, Doralee Brooks, leads this two-part writing workshop. Doralee is accompanied by Christine Aikens Wolfe, who will help encourage participants to try this writing practice and learn how to critique and improve their writing. The workshop focuses on the practice of ekphrasis, a literary device accomplished through detailed descriptions of visual art. The first part of the workshop takes place at the Carnegie Museum of Art, where participants will be able to use the exhibits to inspire their ekphrastic pieces. Participants will meet at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (Main Location) in the South Wing Reading Room before walking to the gallery. 

This workshop is presented in partnership with Carnegie Museum of Art and Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Participants should bring their own writing materials.

Agenda:

10:00–11:30 

Participants meet in the South Wing Reading Room to discuss and read examples of ekphrasis poems in order to better engage with the project. 

11:30–12:15 

The group will venture to the museum and participate in a docent-led tour of “A Pittsburgh Anthology.”

12:15–2:00 

Participants are free to roam the museum, study the art, and draft their ekphrasis poems.

2:00–3:00 

Participants will return to the South Wing Reading Room to debrief, read poems, and share their ideas.

The second ekphrastic writing workshop will take place Saturday, April 29, 2023 at City of Asylum. Registration and further information for the second workshop can be found here. 

About the Instructors:

Doralee Brooks (she/her) is a professor emerita at the Community College of Allegheny County in Developmental Studies and a Madwoman in the Attic workshop instructor at Carlow University. She is a fellow of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project (‘95) and Cave Canem (‘97 and ‘99). She holds an MEd from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA from Carlow University. Her poems have appeared in Voices from the Attic, Paterson Literary Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, and Dos Passos Review, among others. Doralee’s chapbook, When I Hold You Up to the Light, won the 2019 Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Contest published by Main Street Rag. She is City of Asylum’s Poet Laureate of Allegheny County 2022–2024.

Christine Aiken Wolfe’s full-length book of poetry, Garlanding Green, was published by Dos Madres Press in 2018. She had a poem published in Rune magazine last year, then (due to simultaneous submissions) the same poem won second place in the Westmoreland Arts & Heritage Festival Contest. Her poetry appears in Gargoyle, Nerve Cowboy, Paterson Literary Review, Sonnetto Poesia, Rune magazine, and more. Her short story, “Owl & Stag,” is published in The Wild Hunt (Air & Nothingness Press, 2021), and two of her short stories appear in Carlow University’s Voices from the Attic. She co-directed the Western PA Writing Project at Pitt, 1999–2001, and taught Young Writers there from 2002–-2013. She is president of Pittsburgh Poetry Society.