Feb. 17, 2006 -- In conjunction with Delta Blues Symposium XII: Delta Diversity, the Department of English and Philosophy at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro will sponsor two creative writing workshops for fiction writers and poets on Saturday, April 1.

The fiction workshop will be conducted by award-winning writer Tom Piazza. A graduate of the creative writing program at the University of Iowa, Piazza has published a novel, “My Cold War,” and a collection of stories, “Blues and Trouble.”
He has also published several books of music criticism, and his most recent book, “Why New Orleans Matters,” written after Hurricane Katrina, was published in 2005. Moreover, Piazza is the first Grammy Award Winner to conduct a workshop at the Delta Blues Symposium.

Sterling Plumpp will oversee the poetry workshop. A longtime professor at the University of Illinois–Chicago and a Mississippi native, Plumpp has authored many books of poetry, including Blues Narratives, Hornman, and Velvet BeBop Kente Cloth. His work has been much anthologized, and he is recipient of such awards as the Richard Wright Award for Lifetime Achievement and Carl Sandburg Literary Prize for Poetry. He was the subject of a special section in the December 2005 issue of “Arkansas Review,” published by ASU.

Participation in either workshop will be limited, and participants must pre-enroll. Submit a maximum of 10-15 double-spaced pages of fiction or one or two poems. Send name, address, phone number, e-mail address (if available) along with your non-returnable manuscript to: Creative Writing Workshops, Delta Symposium Committee, P.O. Box 1890, Department of English and Philosophy, Arkansas State University, State University, AR 72467.

The deadline for submission is Friday, March 3. Notification of acceptance will be sent in early March.

On Friday, March 31, the workshop directors will read form their work in the Grand Hall of Fowler Center, 201 Olympic Drive. This event is free and open to the public.