POSTPONED: Nate Johnson of FreeWriters on Sept. 23
Published Friday, September 13, 2024
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO A LATER DATE:
Southwest Minnesota State University will host Nate Johnson of FreeWriters on Monday, Sept. 23, 2024. He will be on campus visiting classes during the day and giving a presentation in the SMSU Conference Center Lower Level at 7:00 p.m. His visit is the second guest of the visiting writer series for the 2024-25 academic year.
Nate Johnson is the Founder and CEO of the nonprofit organization, FreeWriters. Nate was a prosecuting attorney who gave up his practice and started the free-writers movement, www.freewriters.org. He uses writing as an instrument of therapy for incarcerated people awaiting their court dates. His organization leads creative writing classes in county jails across Minnesota.
Free-writing is a creative writing exercise that starts with a prompt, followed by five-minute bursts of non-stop, improvisational, draft writing. After the five-minute free-write, participants can opt to share their writing with fellow students.
The event will feature stories from the anthology of work by incarcerated writers who have participated in the FreeWriters workshops. The book is Mindful Writing from the County Jail: A FreeWriters Collection curated by Dennis Kelly. The program will include audience interaction and is free and open to the public.
The event is sponsored by the SMSU Creative Writing Program; the Dean of Arts, Letters and Sciences; the Justice Administration Program; and GOLD College.
For comment on the visiting writer, contact: Amanda Sieling, SMSU Justice Administration professor, at amanda.sieling@SMSU.edu
Learn more about FreeWriters at https://freewriters.org/
Related Articles
