Residency Artist - Creative Writing

Lucrecia Guerrero

Phone: (937) 776-1425
Email: guerrero.lucrecia@yahoo.com

My passion is for writing fiction - short stories, short-short stories, and the novel - and I truly enjoy sharing that passion with others. Some are born with a special aptitude for writing, but experience has taught me that diligence and practice of the craft of writing is what makes for completing writing projects. In my classes and workshops, I may begin by having students recall a personal experience, and I then show them how to bring that memory to life for readers. Observational skills are important to the writing and with this memory exercise, we learn the importance of sensory detail. The memory can stay true to the student's experience or become a story that bears only the seed of the event. In my "Writing Your Culture," for example, students start with a memory. By recalling specific sensory details - clothing, scents, food, setting, conversations - students highlight aspects of their particular cultures. What began as scenes become personal essays, fictional stories or plays. By learning and practicing the craft elements of writing, we can help bring our ideas and dreams to life on the page in order to share them with others. I am very open to discussing the goals of a residency with sponsors and then designing a residency to fit those needs.

My short stories and short-short stories have been published in various literary journals such as The Antioch Review and the Louisville Review. Chasing Shadows, a collection of linked short stories, came out in early 2000, and more recently a novel, Tree of Sighs received a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship and the Premio Aztlan Literary Award. I am currently working on a new novel which will be set in a fictional Ohio town. I appreciate the opportunity to share my love for writing at workshops on fiction writing and appear at literary events for readings or panels.

I have lived in the Midwest for years but grew up on the U.S./Mexico border, bilingual and bicultural, with an American mother from Kentucky and a Mexican father from Puebla, Mexico. As a young girl I did not expect to be able to attend university but when the opportunity arose, I embraced it. I credit my literature classes and the wonderful professors who taught them for turning my life around. The stories and the discussions opened new worlds and new possibilities. I hold a B.A. and M.A. in English and a M.F.A. in Creative Writing and have taught literature and writing at the university level and continue to teach creative writing part-time. In addition to teaching at universities, I have facilitated creative writing workshops and appeared on panels for organizations and conferences, providing me the opportunity to travel across the U.S. My students have been from diverse backgrounds and ages, ranging from teens to senior citizens. The community of the written word is vast, and as I am very much interested in the diversity of the United States I encourage others to celebrate those things that make us both different and yet the same.