Workshop: Building Oral Narratives: The Practical Construction of Effective Stories for Telling

• Event Date: Saturday, March 3, 2012
• Time: 8:30 am–11:00 am (CST)
• Location: Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: $30 adults, $20 students. Preregistration is required.

• Workshop

Drawing on her experiences as an award-winning storyteller, author, and editor, Del Negro will discuss effective narrative structure and word-craft. Group and individual exercises, including word and language games, will focus on the creation of potent visual language for openings, closings, and characterizations. Participants will successfully complete concrete tasks related to their own working stories, as well as acquire tools for future story-crafting.

Janice Del Negro is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, where she teaches Storytelling, Children’s and Young Adult Literature, and Foundations in Library and Information Science. Del Negro has been a featured speaker, storyteller, and workshop leader at the National Storytelling Festival, the Illinois Library Association, the Bay Area Storytelling Festival, the Illinois Storytelling Festival, and many other celebratory events. Her specialties include retelling traditional folktales, reading motivation through literature and storytelling, and transformation stories, with a gentle emphasis on women and ghosts.

Del Negro’s first picture book, Lucy Dove (1998) won the Anne Izard Storytelling Award; her second picture book, Willa and the Wind (2005) was an ALA Notable Book, and an Honor Book for the Irma Simonton Black and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature from the Bank Street College of Education in New York City. Del Negro was formerly the director of the Center for Children’s Books, a special collection of children’s books located at the University of Illinois. Before taking her position as Center director, she was the editor of the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, a monthly review journal of books for youth.

Janice will also be performing during the WorldFest event that afternoon.