Whatever your genre, images are the flesh and blood of your work, the concrete language and descriptions that give it a body. How do we create memorable images that linger in a reader’s mind? How do we build original images that haven’t been “seen” before? And most importantly, how do we give our images movement and dynamic tension? In this class, we’ll study and pick apart memorable images from published work to see what we can learn from them. Then we’ll craft our own original images through a series of guided writing exercises.

STEVE BELLIN-OKA

Steve Bellin-Oka’s first book of poems, Instructions for Seeing a Ghost, won the 2019 Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry and was published by the University of North Texas Press in 2020. He is also the winner of the Blue Mountain Review/Southern Collective Experience LGBQT Poetry Prize for his forthcoming chapbook, Tell Me Exactly What You Saw and What You Think It Means. His two other chapbooks are Dead Letter Office at North Atlantic Station (Seven Kitchens Press, 2017) and Out of the Frame (Walls Divide Press, 2019). He earned his M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Virginia and his Ph.D. from the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers. He has taught writing, film, and literature at the University of Mississippi, St. Norbert College, and Eastern New Mexico University. He is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellow and Research Fellow at the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities. His other honors include the Eli Cantor Fellowship from Yaddo and fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. He was the 2019 recipient of the Poets-in-the-Parks fellowship from the National Parks Arts Foundation. He lives in Tulsa with his husband, their dog, and three cats.

BOOK ORDERS

Please support Steve by purchasing his books here.

Please note: A Zoom link will be automatically emailed to registrants 24 hours prior to the event.