The Lyric Essay Workshop and Reading with Ira Sukrungruang and Katherine Riegel

One of this year's Artsmith Artist Residency Fellows, Ira Sukrungruang, returns to Orcas Island with his wife, Katherine Riegel, for a special Writers' Roundtable workshop on the Lyric Essay this Saturday at Orcas Public Library, followed by a reading at Darvill's Bookstore. Both events are free and open to the public. This is a rare opportunity to hear these two talented writers from Florida..

The Lyric Essay: How to Re-Conceptualize Space

Orcas Public Library, May 11, 1-3:00 PM

Since the emergence of the Lyric Essay in 1997, the essay form has become even more amoebic and malleable. In this Roundtable, we will  explore the different ways an essay can take shape--in both the literal and metaphoric sense. We will discuss various structures of  the essay--the braid, the golfball, the e-narrative--and see how  thinking in structure can lead to inventive ways of talking about the life.

Author Reading and Book-Signing

Darvill's Bookstore, May 11, 6:00 PM

Katherine Riegel

has published two books of poetry, What the Mouth Was Made For (2013) and Castaway (2010). Her work has appeared in journals  including Brevity, Crazyhorse, and Fourth Genre. She is poetry editor  for Sweet: A Literary Confection and teaches at the University of South Florida.

www.katherineriegel.com

Ira Sukrungruang

is the author of the memoir Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy and the coeditor of two anthologies on the topic of  obesity: What Are You Looking At? The First Fat Fiction Anthology and Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology. His poetry collection, In Thailand It Is Night, was awarded the Anita Claire Schraf Award. His work has appeared in many literary journals, including Post Road, The Sun, and Creative Nonfiction. He is one of the founding editors of Sweet: A Literary Confection (sweetlit.com), and teaches in the MFA program at University of South Florida and the low-residency MFA program at City University in Hong Kong. For more information about him, please visit:

www.sukrungruang.com.