Dakota Writing Project

In just a few days (June 2), the Dakota Writing Project 2008
Invitational Summer Institute, housed at the University of South Dakota
in Vermillion, will begin.

Inspired by a special invitation from Kevin Hodgson (Western Mass.
Writing Project), who oversees "Day in a Sentence" and had suggested
trying  "Day in a Comic," I used the program Comic Life to create a sentence (and comic) about preparations for the DWP Invitational Summer Institute. See the comic at http://www.usd.edu/dwp/2008institute/Page_1.gif.

The two teachers in the upper left-hand corner are Carol Christianson
and Sonya Gonzalez; that photo was taken by former DWP director Nancy
Zuercher at the DWP Professional Development "Weekend Warrior" Retreat
in April 2008. The clever license plate belongs to Writing Project
teacher Timothy Duggan, who recently moved to Chicago. The rainstorm
photo shows us a very wet downtown Vermillion, South Dakota, looking
west. The photo of the three students is from the 2006 Sorcerer's Apprentice Creative Writers' Camp that the Dakota Writing Project and the Vermillion Literary Project co-sponsored. The picture in the bottom left-hand corner shows Cindy Nelson composing a text in the 2007 NWP E-Anthology. The bottom center photo and the larger background photo show us Spirit Mound, a site six miles north of Vermillion that we have visited every year during the
summer institute for the past several years. For the first time, we will be opening up this visit/writing adventure to the general public, inviting them to join us as we explore and write at Spirit Mound. In the bottom right hand-corner, you see Karen Rahn, who is co-directing the Summer Institute with me for the second year in a row. --Michelle Rogge Gannon