Briefly

Author to teach character

Sanderia Faye, winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, will teach a workshop from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday titled Character as Setting. Faye will explore the concept of place as character, a technique used by writers such as Toni Morrison and Harper Lee.

Every story begins somewhere; and ideally that somewhere imbues the story with meaning, brings characters to life and leaves readers “seeing” the story as if it were presented in vivid color on a big screen. But sometimes, the setting is so powerful, as it impacts the characters and the plot, that the setting becomes a character in its own right.

Faye is a professional speaker and activist. Her novel, Mourner’s Bench, is the winner of the Hurston/ Wright Legacy Award and The Philosophical Society of Texas Award of Merit for fiction.

The Village Writing School is a 501(c)3 nonprofit whose mission is to help local writers improve their craft. The workshop will be held in the library of the VWS at the Center for Nonprofits, 1200 W. Olive St.in Rogers where Faye will FaceTime in on a 70-inch screen to present and interact with participants. Cost for the afternoon is $25.

Information: Village WritingSchool.com.

Smith lectures

on design

Cynthia E. Smith will give a lecture at 4:30 p.m. Nov. 13 in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, Room 250 of Vol Walker Hall, on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville, as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design lecture series. She will also offer a gallery talk at noon that same day.

Smith is the Curator of Socially Responsible Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. She curated the “By the People: Designing a Better America” exhibition, which is on display through Dec. 16 in the Fred and Mary Smith Exhibition Gallery and other locations within Vol Walker Hall. Organized by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, the exhibition is presented on campus by the Fay Jones School. This display of the “By the People” exhibition is the first stop on a national tour after the initial installation at Cooper Hewitt in New York.

In Smith’s talk, titled “Design by the People for the People,” she will discuss how innovative people and place-based designs are emerging within cities, small towns and rural counties, spanning regions and borders, in response to decades of divestment, social and spatial segregation and mounting climate challenges.

Admission to the gallery talk, lecture and exhibition is free. The exhibition gallery is located on the first floor of Vol Walker Hall, and it is open to the public from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.

This is the June Biber Freeman Endowed Lecture.

Information: (479) 575-4704 or fayjones.uark.edu.

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