The sixteenth annual Winter Wheat: The Mid-American Review Festival of Writing brought faculty, current and past students and members from the community together to share, give tips and learn about writing.

The event held this past weekend featured just under 50 workshops. The workshop topics change every year and cover a wide variety of topics for writers, both new and seasoned, to learn new tools to improve their writing skills.

Since its start in 2001, Winter Wheat has grown from 40 members to 250 people coming each year to the event. It has become a place for current students to network with alumni who are publishing and may have job offers.

Lecturer and Mid-American Review Editor Abigail Cloud likes Winter Wheat because she gets to catch up with alumni who she has not seen and because she gets time to work on writing.

“I like Winter Wheat because as a working writer, I find it really hard to set aside time for writing,” Cloud said. “This is the ideal opportunity for experimentation.”

Each workshop contained a small group of people to ensure a lot of ideas and experiences are shared effectively. Some of the workshops this year were about writing fiction and non-fiction works, writing about family, writing a death scene and book design. Guest speaker and one of Winter Wheat’s founders, Karen Craigo, spoke at the event discussing poetry and meditation.

Senior Marissa Medley attended Winter Wheat last year and was back this year to be on a panel as well as participate in the other workshops being offered.

“I attended a workshop last year about travel writing. It was interesting because these two girls took a month-long road trip and they shared how it influenced them in the characters they wrote about (and the setting of their stories),” Medley said. “This year, for my Honors project, I’m presenting a panel (at Winter Wheat) focusing on writing about family because it’s a popular topic.”

Freshman Kianarose Irving thought that her first Winter Wheat was helpful to her writing.

“This event helped me…by reaching out of my comfort zone,” Irving said. “The feedback was genuine and everyone wanted to see the other succeed in their work, and that made me feel confident in sharing (my work) during panels, which is something I don’t generally do.”

At the end of Winter Wheat, those who attended were encouraged to attend an open mic to share new pieces that were created over the weekend. Members from the community came to listen and relax after the eventful weekend.

“(The open mic) night is a great time to enjoy the social interaction and see alumni that I didn’t get a chance to see during the weekend,” Cloud said.

Winter Wheat is an event encouraging everyone to learn about new writing skills without any pressure from peers.

“It was awesome to be surrounded by people who loved writing and literature as much as I do,” Irving said. “It didn’t matter the amount of experience you had. Everyone was super welcoming and encouraging.”