Young Writers Finding Their Voice – Pine and Lakes Echo Journal

STAPLES – More than 300 students from central Minnesota schools gained first-hand experience writing, learning and developing their voice at Sourcewell’s Young Authors Conference on Nov. 14 and 15 at Central Lakes College’s Staples campus.

Students in grades 4-6, including a group from Pequot Lakes, were invited to this long-running event, which was spread over two days due to the large number of participants.

Eight local presenters shared their experiences as professional writers and covered storytelling topics such as dialogue, characters, illustration, songwriting and more.

Crysta Christensen, Student Programs Coordinator at Sourcewell, said the event was about giving students the opportunity to develop their own writing skills, style and voice by helping them leverage their strengths as to find authors and by possibly opening them up to directions that they had not considered.

Contributed

“We want every student to know that their narrative voice is unique,” ​​Christensen said. “This event is about encouraging students to tell the stories that matter to them in their own way. We were very fortunate to have keynote speaker Dawn and the other presenters share their expertise over the two days and the response from our young writers was spectacular.”

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Speakers and topics included: Dawn Quigley, keynote speaker; Stacy Ebert, “A Cucumber Is Worth a Thousand Words: Illustrate Expressive Characters with Page-Turning Personalities;” Ken Lonnquist, “Voice, Tone, and Rhythm: Make Your Writing Sing”; John Coy, “Let’s Talk: How Dialogue Can Improve Your Writing”; Jason Walz, “Let’s Make a Comic”; Art Coulson, “Bringing Your Characters to Life”; Abby Cooper, “Writing is Magic”; and Ty Chapman, “Writing a Scene with Conflict.”

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