Pulitzer Prize Winner to Headline CCBC Forum

Pulitzer prize-winning author Jennifer Egan and Sondheim Prize-winning filmmaker Matt Porterfield are set to be the main speaker at the 26th annual Creative Writing Forum on April 12 at CCBC Essex.

Egan, who won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for her book, A Visit from the Goon Squad, is this year’s keynote speaker.  From 12:30-2 p.m., Egan will give a reading followed by a question and answer session about her work and the creative process.

Then from 7-9 p.m., Porterfield will give a screening of his work and give a lecture on filmmaking. A film and media studies professor at Johns Hopkins University, Porterfield’s first feature, "Hamilton," was released in 2006.

In 2008, he participated in the Independent Filmmaker’s Project Forum with his screenplay, "Metal Gods", which won that year’s Panasonic Digital Filmmaking Grand Prize.

His most recent feature, "Putty Hill," premiered at the Berlinale’s International Forum of New Cinema in 2010 and was released in the United States by Cinema Guild in 2011.

This year, Porterfield won the Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize and was the recipient of a Robert J. Flaherty Dratfield Fellowship. His new film, "I Used to Be Darker," co-written with Amy Belk, is currently in post-production.

Selected Baltimore County high school and CCBC students will be able to attend writing workshops from 4 – 5:15 p.m. with published local writers:  Susi Wyss (The Civilized World), Amy Belk (I Used to Be Darker), Kendra Kopelke (Eager Street), Shelley Puhak (Stalin in Aruba) and Matt Porterfield (screening writing workshop).

According to Carr Kizzier, CCBC English faculty member and chairman for this year’s event, the Creative Writing Forum was established at CCBC in 1986 to recognize publicly the talent and achievements of writing students in community colleges and high schools of Baltimore County and to acknowledge the dedication and excellence of their writing teachers.

Each spring, the Forum has invited a critically acclaimed creative writer to read and has brought together students and local professional writers in workshops devoted to addressing young writers’ questions about the craft. 

The forum is free and open to the public.