Valencia hosts the Winter Park Writers Festival, featuring a special poetry vs. prose slam

By Bernard Wilchusky on Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 10:54 am

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Kim Buchheit

Brian Turner

You want writers? They got writers. You want workshops? They got those too. You want – hold your breath – a poetry-versus-prose battle royale? Well, hitch up your britches and saddle up, cowboy, because you’re headed to the Winter Park Writers Festival. The three-day festival at Valencia College features student-oriented activities like workshops led by local authors Ilyse Kusnetz (Small Hours) and Cate McGowan (True Places Never Are), and a master class by poet Brian Turner (My Life as a Foreign Country). For the unenrolled among us, there’s a free (RSVP required) evening reading on Thursday from those writers and a slam hosted by There Will Be Words that pits slam poets against flash fiction prose writers in a showdown liable to upend local literary discourse for at least days to come. Be there or be gauche.

reading 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 24, , slam 6:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 25 | Valencia College Winter Park Campus, 850 W. Morse Blvd., Winter Park | winterparkwritersfestival.weebly.com | free