During summer quarter, I worked with a campus instructor and a librarian at the local public library to bring a noted North Dakota author into the Bismarck/Mandan community. Shadd, the instructor, contacted Larry Woiwode, a North Dakota native whose works have received high acclaim, and asked him to come to Bismarck to do a reading of his book A Step from Death: A Memoir and to discuss his experiences as a writer. I launched a campus-wide book discussion group over A Step from Death and invited the Bismarck Veterans Memorial Library to partner with the college for the author’s visit. The public library hosted event and publicized the event through displays, on its webpage, and to its mailing lists. The marketing team from Rasmussen crafted a press release which was picked up by the local newspaper.
On August 20, approximately 70 people gathered in a meeting room at the public library. After an introduction by Shadd, Larry Woiwode shared a poems and then read sections from his novel. He then took questions from the audience, many focusing on his writing process. The evening finished with Larry signing books and visiting one-on-one with attendees.
As a result of this successful event, my contact from the local public library and I are already discussing ways to collaborate in the future for more community and lifelong learning events.
2 comments:
Hi Chandra,
What an exciting and successful event! What was a personal highlight of yours? Did Larry have a question and answer portion? If you could do one thing over about this event what would it be?
My personal highlight was seeing how excited the community members were about this event. Many of the people in attendance had heard Larry read several years ago when the BPL hosted a similar event. Larry did a Q&A session, and I loved learning about his writing process. When he writes a novel, he writes it from start to finish without getting input from other people. He feels that when a writer lets others have input into an initial draft, that work becomes less of the writer's own creation.
If I were to do this event over, I think I'd have a campus event in addition to one at the public library. With our event last week, no Ras students attended the reading at the public library.
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