Writing for their lives

A Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and world-renowned writers will impart bits of wisdom to the PLNU community for the 13th annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea next week. The event, hosted by PLNU’s Department of Literature, Journalism and Modern Languages on Feb. 4-8, will be the largest Writer’s Symposium held at PLNU.

The symposium brings writers and artists to the campus every February “as a way to encourage and inspire our students and some people from the community,” said PLNU journalism professor and journalist Dean Nelson, who created the symposium.

“The Writer’s Symposiums in the past have been really good, so I trust the people who get the writers to come,” said Justin Wright, senior literature major.

Writers from previous years have included Ray Bradbury, Amy Tan, Donald Miller, Eugene Peterson and Anne Lamott. This year, the seven visiting writers—including renowned journalist Gay Talese, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Richie Furay and Christian writer Phillip Yancey—all have the common thread of the memoir genre running through their writing careers, hence the theme, “Writing for Their Lives.”

“We have world-class writers available to our students—for free,” said Carl Winderl, PLNU literature professor.

Sessions with the writers will either be held as writing workshops or in an interview format. Nelson will interview most of the writers, but literature professor Karl Martin will interview Furay about the process of songwriting.

“Furay has been writing songs for more than 30 years,” Martin said. “We’ve never brought in songwriters before.”

Jon Foreman, lead singer, guitarist and co-founder of the band Switchfoot, will join Furay on stage. All interviews will be televised by UCSD-TV, which has taped the interviews since the symposium was created.

But UCSD-TV will not be the only camera crew in the audience this year. As Nelson interviews writer and memoirist Anchee Min, cameras from The History Channel will also be rolling. The TV station is doing a biography on Min, who is most famous for her memoir Red Azalea.

“Something that will be on The History Channel will have been shot during our symposium,” said Nelson. “Is that cool or what?”

For more information, visit www.pointloma.edu/writers or contact Edie Chapman at echapman@pointloma.edu or 619-849-2297.