In its fifth year the Ithaca Literary Festival, Spring Writes, presents a weekend full of workshops, readings, and performances. Check the calendar for the full schedule of activities. Here’s a few highlights to entice to you to one of the dozen venues downtown to participate in the festivities. There are more than 30 events to inspire you. Sponsored by the Community Arts Partnership in Tompkins County, all events are free and open to the public. Friday, May 2, 5:30pm-7:00pm at Buffalo Street Books The Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts presents an all-local group of past and current Saltonstall Fellows. They include Sarah Jefferis (2014 Non-fiction), Fran Markover (2010 Poetry), and Bob Proehl (2013 Fiction). Saturday May 3, 10am-11:45am at Buffalo Street Books If you’ve ever heard the expression “Write what you know” and thought, “Hey, I don’t know anything worth writing about,” this is for you! Especially geared to teens with an interest in storytelling, three local fiction writers — Anne Mazer, Shawn Goodman, and Rob Costello — will lead a fun and freewheeling workshop designed to introduce some of the basic writing tools that can help any writer spin a good story out of practically anything. Pen, paper, and imagination are all that’s required! * Anne Mazer is the author of 45 books for young readers: The Salamander Room, The Oxboy, The Amazing Days of Abby Hayes series and more. * Shawn Goodman is the award-winning author of the Young Adult novels, Kindness for Weakness, and Something Like Hope. * Rob Costello has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young…

  January is a time for new starts and creative bursts. Despite the bitter cold and desolate landscape, this is a wonderful time to generate fresh content. Take this One Week writing challenge. Spend 15-20 minutes every day for the next week.   Day 1 Pick a photograph that speaks to you. One with a story behind it that isn’t entirely contained in the visual information. Paint a portrait of this snapshot moment in words. Include the backstory not revealed by the image. Day 2 Sketch a description of a character, a specific person, in words. Physical attributes, behavioral traits, challenges, goals, motives. Can you capture their voice? Day 3 Find a poem or a short quotation which inspires you. Without quoting or plagiarizing phrases, write an essay about the images, memories, ideas, and feelings the work evokes in you. Day 4 Put together the playlist of 10 songs for your story. Why these songs? What do they mean to you? Day 5 Think of a smell you remember so pungently you couldn’t ever forget it. Write about when and where you were when your olfactory senses imprinted the memory indelibly. Describe the memory. Reflect upon its import. Day 6 Select a myth, a fairytale, or archetypal narrative to reflect upon. David and Goliath, Oedipus, Cinderella, Hamlet. Pull the first one that comes to mind. How do you connect with it? With which character do you identify? Rewrite the myth from this character’s point of view.   Day 7 Write…

The July publication of Go Set a Watchman revealed Harper Lee changed point of view when she rewrote it as To Kill a Mockingbird. The new book is an unedited version and shows Harper Lee sloppily slip-sliding between first-person and third. The difference between a story narrated by Jean Louise Finch, a 26-year-old daughter, about her disillusionment in Atticus and small town bigotry, and the one narrated by a 6-year-old Scout is significant. To Kill a Mockingbird is written in third-person limited point of view. Scout tells the story of what happened in her Alabama hometown when a black man was falsely accused of raping a white woman and her father served as his defense attorney. The narrator in To Kill a Mockingbird is an adult, Jean Louise, who tells the story of what Scout witnessed as a child. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote a manuscript, Pioneer Girl, published for the first time in December 2014 by the South Dakota Historical Society and edited by Pamela Smith Hill. This first-person account of growing up with hardships and tragedies as white settlers didn’t find interest from a publisher. It did, however, inspire 11 novels and multiple short stories by Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane. An editor and successful Bobbs-Merrill author, Rose suggested ‘Mama Bess’ (the nickname she called her mother) consider fictionalizing the stories for the juvenile market. Wilder revised and based her first novel, Little House in the Big Woods, on Pioneer Girl. Developmental editing of Wilder’s…