The 2023 Small Poems, Great Writers is a slow writing marathon offered by the Morehead Writing Project. Writers of all ages and all geographic locations are invited to write with us and share with us. Teachers of all geographic locations are invited to use our writing invitations and lessons, but only teachers in the Morehead Writing Project service region are eligible for additional support.
A writing marathon is a simple thing inspired by Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. A group of writers commit to taking a writing journey together in a specific place at a specific time and you have a writing marathon. Usually there is sharing and often there is food. Sometimes there is a lot of walking, sometimes driving, and sometimes zooming. The Morehead Writing Project has prepared a Deeper Dive via the National Writing Project's Write Now Teacher Studio offering more information about writing marathons and how to create your own.
A slow writing marathon simply extends over more time (months rather than hours). The 2023 Small Poems, Great Writers marathon will kick off in January and run through April (National Poetry Month). Writers and teachers will have complete control over when and how they will participate. The Just Write Virtual Writing Group (aka the Rebel Cartographers) will participate in all four months and every stage of the writing journey from freewriting to crafting poems to publishing an anthology but some teachers may choose to explore the writing invitations once with their students and then move on. The whole point of a slow writing marathon is to allow writers and teachers to fit their participation to their unique context and needs.
Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay