Keith S. Wilson
Keith S. Wilson is a game designer, an Affrilachian Poet, and a Cave Canem fellow. He is a recipient of an NEA Fellowship, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, and an Illinois Arts Council Agency Award, and has received both a Kenyon Review Fellowship and a Stegner Fellowship. Additionally, he has received fellowships or grants from Bread Loaf, Tin House, the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, UCross, the Millay Colony, and James Merrill House, among others. Keith was a Gregory Djanikian Scholar, and his poetry has won the Rumi Prize and been anthologized in Best New Poets and Best of the Net. His book, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love (Copper Canyon), was recognized by the New York Times as a best new book of poetry.
Keith’s nonfiction has won an Indiana Review Nonfiction Prize and the Redivider Blurred Line Prize, and has been anthologized in the award-winning collection Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy. His poetry and prose have appeared in Elle, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among others.
Keith’s work in game design includes “Once Upon a Tale,” a storytelling card game designed for Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago in collaboration with The Field Museum of Chicago, and alternate reality games (ARGs) for the University of Chicago. He has worked with or taught new media with Kenyon College, the Field Museum, the Adler Planetarium, and the University of Chicago.
Selected Publications
POETRY: “spell to trace a rainbow to its apogee,” The Georgia Review
POETRY: “Batter Bread,” The Atlantic
POETRY: “line dance for an american textbook,” Poetry
POETRY: “reportage on a theory,” Poetry
POETRY: “Black Matters,” Poetry
Topics addressed in readings:
Black identity
Love
Multi-racial identity
Masculinity
Science and technology
Video games
Formalism
Visual poetics
Digital poetics
American politics
Sample workshop 1: breaking form: working in visual poetics
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what about a picture made from a thousand words? Poems that use typography, white space, and such non-textual visual elements as illustration, color, and graphic design are at the forefront of contemporary poetry. Many of us are familiar with the “concrete poem,” but what else can thinking about poetry as a visual form do for your writing? In this workshop, we will look at examples of visual poems and do exercises for brainstorming and writing. By the end, you will have drafted at least one poem that uses visual elements as well as traditional poetry techniques.
sample workshop 2: Getting Interactive: Writing Digital "Choose-Your-Own-Adventure"-style stories and Games
If you've ever read a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, or "played" Netflix's "Bandersnatch," you are already familiar with the concept of a branching narrative. In a branching narrative, a reader experiences a story that occasionally allows them a choice which changes the results of the narrative. The good news is you don't have to know much about computers to write one. And knowing how to write interactive fiction is key to opening up an industry that hires hundreds of creative writers a year (the video game industry). In this talk, we will learn about the unique affordances and challenges of writing an interactive narrative, as well as go over a quick tutorial of how to get started immediately. No knowledge of games or programming needed!
testimonials
““Wilson’s debut explores love, violence, isolation, and enduring uncertainty. Beneath ostensible happiness, the speaker exhumes ambivalence through stark honesty: “Loving is a misnomer, because you are expected// of your heart’s opinion on a sentence that is never completed,/ even as you’re having it.” Wilson’s collection is romantic yet world-weary, bereaved but fortified—a kindred reflection of the heart in the modern world.”
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““A strong debut collection in which the romanticism you expect (and want) from a younger writer is held in check by a considerable, self-questioning intelligence.” ”
