VAAC Annual Meeting this Saturday!

Dear VAAC Members and Friends, You are cordially invited to these upcoming events: Annual Meeting & Potluck, Sat., Sept. 17, 6-9 p.m. at Washington Street Arts Center. If you aren’t already a VAAC member, please come and join at this event as we celebrate our building restoration and enjoy an artful evening, featuring paintings by Agnes “Bobbie” Alsgaard-Lien, and music by Rebecca Gehm, Phil Devaney, Morgan Carnes and Phil Thoendal. At the meeting, the Board will provide a report on our finances and a strategic plan for the coming year, and we’ll elect four new members to the VAAC Board. September 24th from 7-9 p.m. at the Arts Center, novelist and filmmaker, Charles Nauman and author Jerry Wilson will read from and autograph their recently published books. Nauman’s novel Pola was published in 2010, and Wilson’s collection of short stories Blackjacks and Blue Devils was published in 2011. Following the reading, there will be a reception for the authors and for artist “Bobbie” Alsgaard-Lien. The event is free and open to the public.

Creative writing camp for high school students at USD Sept. 24

Teachers, administrators, and other educators are invited to nominate talented high school students for “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: A Creative Writing Camp,” to be held Saturday, September 24, 2011, at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. The Dakota Writing Project (DWP), a local teachers' organization affiliated with the National Writing Project, and the Vermillion Literary Project (VLP), an award-winning student organization, are hosting the one-day camp, with assistance from Prairie Winds. The camp, which will run from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., includes workshops on short fiction, poetry, art-inspired creative writing, theatrical writing, revision, performance, and poetry slam, to be followed by a public reading in Farber Hall. No experience with creative writing is necessary. The registration fee includes a day of workshops, a camp t-shirt, lunch, break refreshments, and a copy of the VLP magazine. The regular registration fee is $60, but if students register by September 12, the fee is only $50. A limited number of reduced-fee scholarships based on financial need are available; email dwp@usd.edu for info. The registration form, workshop descriptions, and details are available at http://tinyurl.com/dwpcamp . (A poster for advertising the camp and the camp registration form are also attached to this email.) This is the sixth year of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice Camp. Last year, student writers from South Dakota, Iowa, and Nebraska participated in the camp. * * * * * * The Dakota Writing Project is a non-profit teachers’ organization that focuses on improving the teaching of writing through an invitational summer institute for teachers and a variety of other activities. For more information, visit http://connect.nwp.org/dakota-writing-project . The Vermillion Literary Project, a student organization at the University of South Dakota, publishes an annual literary magazine and hosts literary events for the university community and the general public. For more information, visit http://orgs.usd.edu/projlit.