Portland Workshop Update

Amy Starke reports that the Professional Obituary Writers Workshop, which will be held at The Oregonian in Portland, Ore., May 8-11, is shaping up.

So far, she and her workshop partner Joan Harvey have lined up the following:

-- Jack Hart, nationally known writer's coach, will conduct one of his special writing intensives.

-- Don Colburn, Oregonian reporter, will kick off a discussion of handling suicides in obituaries with a talk on Oregon's assisted suicide law and how it works.

-- Gayle Sims of the Philadelphia Inquirer is tentatively scheduled to conduct a half-day workshop on multimedia.

-- Larken Bradley, who has received several National Newspaper Association honors for obituaries she wrote for a weekly paper in Marin County, Calif., is expected to conduct discussions on writing obituaries for pay and on doing obituaries for community newspapers.

-- Adam Bernstein of the Washington Post will address writing advance obituaries and doing deep historical research.

-- Kay Powell, obits editor at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, is scheduled to speak about “Regional Differences in Obituaries,” “Tragedy Interviewing” and how smaller papers and weekly papers can work obituaries into each edition.

-- Alana Baranick of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio, will talk about organizing the brand-new Society of Professional Obituary Writers.

Visit this blog and the SPOW site - which is under construction at the moment - for the latest in the continuing saga of the workshop and the new organization.