Dare County Arts Council is now accepting applications for the 7th Annual Outer Banks Veterans Writing Workshop, which will be held November 9-10, 2019 at the UNC Coastal Studies Institute in Wanchese.
Beginner and experienced writers are invited to participate in this two-day workshop that is free for veterans, active-duty military and their family members.
This year’s workshop will focus on poetry, and will be led by veterans Ron Capps and Colin Halloran.
Ron Capps is the founder and director of the National Veterans Writing Project. He served 25 years in the Army and Army Reserve and is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. He is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in Time and The New York Times. His published works include Writing War: A Guide to Telling Your Own Story and Seriously Not All Right: Five Wars in Ten Years. Capps led a Veterans Songwriting Workshop on the Outer Banks this past May, and recently won awards in the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival for two of his songs. The Forever War and This Time won gold and bronze medals and The Forever War received special recognition.
Jacksonville, NC based Army veteran, photographer and published writer Colin Halloran will join Capps and take the lead teaching this year’s workshop. Halloran holds a Master of Fine Arts and currently teaches English at Coastal Carolina Community College. He won the 2019 Street Rag Poetry Book Award for Shortly Thereafter, his memoir-in-verse recounting his experiences as a US Army Infantryman on the frontlines of Afghanistan. His other published works include Icarian Flux, The Road Ahead: Fiction from the Forever War, and Retire the Colors: Veterans and Civilians on Iraq and Afghanistan.
“This two-day, writing intensive poetry workshop will cover the foundations of effective poetry writing, to include discussions of craft elements like rhythm, line, word choice, persona, and metaphor,” said Colin Halloran. “Participants will read a variety of exemplars and create a variety of their own work based on these and various prompts. While the focus will be on poetry, the nature of poetry to sharply focus on language will make this valuable to writers across genres.”
Modeled after the DC-based Veterans Writing Project, a non-profit foundation that teaches combat veterans to express their military experiences through literature, the goal of the Outer Banks Veterans Writing Project is to teach enrolled applicants the art of writing.
Former and current service men and women and members of their families are encouraged to sign up for the writing workshop online here. The workshop will accommodate up to 25 participants.
A variety of local hotels on the Outer Banks are offering discounts for workshop participants. For a full list of these accommodations, click here.
Through a grant from the Military and Veteran Arts Programs at the North Carolina Arts Council, The Outer Banks Veterans Writing Project is part of the veteran-friendly events sponsored by the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau during November’s Outer Banks Veterans Week, which hosts numerous veteran celebrations from Corolla to Cape Hatteras.
Outer Banks Veterans Week will start on Friday, November 1 and conclude on Veterans Day, November 11.
Groups interested in listing their veteran events in the Veterans Week calendar of events should send an email to dcacvetprograms@gmail.com.
For more information about the Veterans Writing Workshop, click here or call 252 473 5558.
This project is supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural & Cultural Resources. This project is also supported in part by the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau.