Artists Return to Write On to Give Back to Community

The writers’ residency program at Write On, Door County welcomes new and returning artists to its Juddville property this month. Write On welcomes back poets Athena Kildegaard, Donna Hilbert, and Diane LeBlanc, and looks forward to introducing fiction writer Jonathan Wlodarski to the beauty and inspiration of Door County.

Wlodarski is a graduate student in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. Wlodarski, who has published fiction and poetry in a number of journals and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, will offer “Short and Strange: A Workshop on Twisting Reality in Flash Fiction” on May 13, 9 am – noon, at Glas Coffeehouse in Sturgeon Bay. Through special arrangement, the class is being offered free to Door County high school students. The workshop is also open to adults; a $45 tuition is required.

Wlodarski will also be featured at the May 12 Art/Speaks writing lab at the Margaret Lockwood Gallery in Sturgeon Bay. This is a free 90-minute workshop encouraging writers at all levels of experience to write in response to a piece of art.

Kildegaard first visited Write On in May of 2015. She returns again this month, this time to work with students at Gibraltar Area Schools. She comes from Morris, Minn., and has published several collections of poetry, including Bodies of Light, which was a finalist for the 2011 Minnesota Book Award.

The month concludes with visits by returning artists Donna Hilbert and Diane LeBlanc. Hilbert is a poet from Long Beach, Cali.; LeBlanc is a professor, poet, and book artist from Northfield, Minn. The two met last year while on their first residency at Write On. “We connected like long-lost friends,” LeBlanc said of meeting Hilbert. “[We] made books featuring poems we’d written during the week. As we folded and glued and printed with the basic supplies I’d brought, we imagined sharing the experience with others.”

That experience as the inspiration for their upcoming class on May 26, “Write, Stitch, Glue,” which will transform poems or short prose into a handmade book.

Hilbert will also be featured in a reading with 2017-2019 Door County Poet Laureate Sharon Auberle and Ralph Murre, who served as the poet laureate from 2015 to 2017, poets she met on her last residency. “I loved meeting poets and artists from the community – I am convinced that there is something really magical about Wisconsin for poetry,” Hilbert said. Classical guitarist Christy Christensen will provide music for the reading, which takes place at Margaret Lockwood Gallery in Sturgeon Bay on June 1 at 7 pm. The reading is free and open to all ages.

For more information visit writeondoorcounty.org.