Sunflower Summer: A Tribute to Takeshi Kitano and George Romero

Sunflower Summer

That summer had a face like a sunflower

mane of yellow hair framing circle of tan

Clytie watching Apollo kiss her sister beside the coal bin

in the back of a three-car garage

In Takeshi Kitano’s Hana-Bi

 “flower fires” create and consume

Horibe painting smiling flower heads on lions 

bending upward toward hana-bi hung in the sky

like Romero’s Land of the Dead 

flowers in the graveyard

not the kind you lay on the ground 

sky flowers way up in heaven

reflecting off a paddle boat 

in the center of Duck Lake 

and those chipped teeth 

moving to face the sun

distracting decoys planted in a line

their thick stalks confront the wind

seeds weakening growth

like Clytie’s sister locked in a cave

or 

planted in loose soil behind the Buick

Clytie turning slowly 

Her flower face following

Apollo’s dazzling chariot and radiant crown

Lions in Winter Schedule: All Events on January 27, 2018

Schedule

Registration is Required for Attendance at Craft Talks & for Breakfast and Lunch.

Writers’ Readings are Free and Open to the Public.

9:00-9:30     Continental Breakfast and Welcome 

*If you have not purchased a breakfast ticket with your registration and would like breakfast, you may purchase a ticket at the registration desk.

[Doudna Concourse]

 9:30-10:10   Rachael Hanel Reading 

Free and Open to the Public

[Doudna Recital Hall]

10:20-11:10  Craft Talk with Creative Nonfiction Writer Rachael Hanel

“Time Is of the Essence—Chronology in Memoir”

[Doudna Lecture Hall]

11:20-12:00  CM Burroughs Reading 

Free and Open to the Public

[Doudna Recital Hall]

12:05-1:00    Lunch 

*If you have not purchased a lunch ticket with your registration and would like lunch, you may purchase a ticket at the registration desk.

[Doudna Concourse]

1:05-1:55       Craft Talk with Poet CM Burroughs

“Logic of the Eye”

[Doudna Lecture Hall]

2:00-2:45     Vu Tran Reading 

Free and Open to the Public

[Doudna Recital Hall]

2:55-3:45      Craft Talk with Novelist Vu Tran

“What Movies Can Teach Us As Writers”
[Doudna Lecture Hall]

4:00-5:00    Undergraduate & Graduate Student Reading 

Students from nearby universities come together to present their creative work. Free and Open to the Public. [Doudna Recital Hall]

5:05-6:00     Editors’ Panel Discussion

Hear the editors of featured journals talk about the submission process, literary citizenship, and helpful dos and don’ts.

[Doudna Lecture Hall]

The Lions in Winter Bookfair, including works by our featured writers, will run

from 9:30 AM to 12 Noon and from 2:00 to 4:00 PM, in the Doudna Concourse. 

Authors will be happy to sign books throughout the day’s activities.

Free and Open to the Public.

Lions in Winter Craft Talks

Craft Talks

Poetry: CM Burroughs 
Logic of the Eye 

How does a poet keep her reader stable when a poem’s narrative is nonlinear or difficult to discern? In these moments, the image can be a powerful tool. Burroughs  will demonstrate how you might lead a reader from your first line to your last using imagery as primary energy, and how to read poems that are grounded strongly in the logic of the eye.

Creative Nonfiction: Rachael Hanel
Time is of the Essence—Chronology in Memoir

In memoir the author must make decisions about chronology, whether the action takes place in a narrow time frame or spreads out over many years. An effective memoir doesn’t simply start at Point A and go straight through to end at Point Z. Instead, the story shifts back and forth from past to present, sometimes chapter by chapter but at other times it’s even as nuanced as paragraph by paragraph. This talk will examine how memoirists deal with the notion of time.

Fiction: Vu Tran 
What Movies Can Teach Us As Writers 

For better or for worse, movies affect the way we read and write fiction.  Many writers approach their work with a cinematographer’s eye and a screenwriter’s heart, but even for those who rarely watch movies and have no desire to write or see their work adapted for the screen, the language of cinema has already spent over a century seeping into the ways we tell stories on the page.  How has it degraded the art of fiction, and how has it enhanced and expanded the art?  What cinematic impulses do we knowingly and unknowingly bring to our work, and how might we learn from and take advantage of those impulses, the bad as well as the good?  In this talk, we’ll consider all these questions, including the most important one of all: what can literature do that cinema cannot?

Lions in Winter 2018!

Featured Writers

Lions in Winter is a full-day literary festival that includes author readings, craft talks by featured writers in fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, an editors panel, a book fair, and more. Readings are free and open to the public.  All craft talks with authors require registration. Registration also includes continental breakfast and lunch.

CM Burroughs is Assistant Professor of Poetry at Columbia College Chicago. Her book of poems The Vital System is published by Tupelo Press. Burroughs has been awarded fellowships and grants from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Cave Canem Foundation, Callaloo Writers Workshop, and the University of Pittsburgh. She has received commissions from the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Warhol Museum to create poetry in response to art installations. Her poetry has appeared in journals including Poetry, Callaloo, jubilat, Ploughshares, VOLT, Bat City Review, Best American Experimental Writing 2015, and Volta. Burroughs is a graduate of Sweet Briar College, and she earned her MFA from the University of Pittsburgh.

Rachael Hanel is a writer and assistant professor of mass media in Mankato, Minnesota. Her memoir, We’ll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down: Memoir of a Gravedigger’s Daughter (2013, U of Minnesota Press), was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award. She has written several nonfiction books for children. Her essays have appeared in online and print literary journals such as Bellingham Review and New Delta Review. She is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

Vu Tran’s first novel is Dragonfish, a New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. He is the winner of a Whiting Award, and his short stories have appeared in publications like the O. Henry Prize Stories and the Best American Mystery Stories. Born in Vietnam and raised in Oklahoma, Vu received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and his PhD from the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Practice in Creative Writing at the University of Chicago.

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Happy Holidays!