Last week, Millikin hosted their second annual one-day conference, Celebration of Storytelling, which focuses on writing, publishing, literature, and, most importantly, storytelling.
The event featured various storytellers, from artists to writers, publishers, and educators.
The featured speakers this year included Anna Sortino, Katy Lipscomb, Tyler Fisher, Vicky Weber, Stephen Frech, Nick Heeb, and current Millikin professors Dr. Rebecca Orchard and Emily Fontenot.
This conference is the reimagined version of the Literary Festival, an annual two-day conference that began in 2002 and ran until 2019, consisting of poems, short stories, novels, and essays with leading writers at the time.
Some examples included poetry workshops with craft lectures and graphic novels. It gave students and writers the opportunity to meet people in the field and learn how to enhance their craft and network.
The current conference is funded through the School of Writing, Languages, and Cultures and Title III grant funding.
A writing contest is held for high school and community college students for a chance to receive a $1,000 scholarship to Millikin University, where they can submit any literary work, such as poetry or essays.
Dr. Frech, who was an English professor at Millikin, led the Literary Festival until COVID-19.
“Liz Hollendonner, who works in the library, wanted to bring together an event like this,” Director of the School of Writing, Languages & Cultures, Dr. Julie Bates, said. “At the same time, we were trying to figure out how to do something like the Literary Festival.”
In bringing back a festival-style event, the organizers welcomed storytellers of every background, age, and discipline to a wider creative community.
“We have a really good mix. We have community members, high school students, and then quite a few of our own Millikin students, as well as faculty and staff here today,” Bates said.
From 8:45 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., attendees heard from successful storytellers, attended breakout sessions on various topics and workshops, and listened to Sortino’s keynote address.
Anna Sortino led a workshop titled “From Idea to Outline” about how to turn an initial idea into a narrative, Nick Heeb led another workshop titled “First Act Speed Round,” where students could learn about screenwriting structure, and Katy Lipscomb and Tyler Fisher led the workshop titled “From Creative Block to Creative Practice: Sustainable Systems for Better Work”.
After the keynote, the featured speakers tabled in the OCLP to sign books and speak more with students about their work.
Lipscomb and Fisher are based out of Athens, Georgia, where Lipscomb is a professional illustrator and head of her own design firm, and Fisher is a professional author and artist who operates and cofounded Katy Lipscomb LLC.
The two shared at least 16 different tools and pieces of advice on how to combat “creative block,” a.k.a. writer’s or artist’s block.
One of their main points was collaboration, which means you don’t have to be afraid to go outside your discipline, because there are so many opportunities where a person’s skills can be applied in other fields.
They were able to apply painting techniques to writing, such as creating an underpainting, which translates into writing something down as a base layer on a canvas. Overall, these tools have formed a structure to the creative process, honed from their years of experience.
Vicky Weber is a literary agent and bestselling children’s book author. Her core advice is to treat knowledge and networking as your greatest assets and embrace diverse experiences.
Graduating from Millikin with a music education degree in 2015, she says that writing children’s books is just like writing in rhyme.
“There’s a musicality to that and meter consistency patterns,” Weber said. “There are a lot of things that you wouldn’t expect, and I think that’s why most people don’t realize how much overlap there is in other fields. If you start looking at the skills and the elements of what you’re doing, you can learn and grow in ways you don’t even imagine. I use my music [education] degree far more than you would think in publishing.”
A current educator at Unity Christian School, Dr. Frech, is the founder of Oneiros Press, which publishes letterpress poetry broadsides.
“It’s always a thrill to be on campus,” Frech said. “It’s been especially gratifying for me coming back so recently that some of my former students are still here and to hear they’re ready to launch in the world.”
At Frech’s table was a spread of limited-edition prints, most from Blue Satellite Press, a Millikin class (2008-2023) that specialized in broadside printmaking.
“This conference is terrific,” Frech said. “I think to reconceive [the literary festival] as a storytelling conference is a great way to help young people craft their own stories in any medium.”
Liz Hollendonner, librarian of Staley Library, played a leading role in ensuring communication and coordination for the event, managing artists and guests, and keeping the planning team on track.
“Considering this is only our second year, I thought we did pretty well in the collection of people who were able to come,” Hollendonner said. “I think we’ve learned a few more things this year that we can implement for next year, and I’m very much looking forward to planning [that].”
This year’s Celebration of Storytelling showed that by bringing together creatives across disciplines, storytelling isn’t limited to words but comes out in images, collaboration, and lived experience.
The event continues to evolve into a space where emerging storytellers can explore every medium their stories might take.
For more information about the guest speakers, click here: https://millikin.edu/news-events/events/celebration-storytelling
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