2012 Professional Writers Series - Jelly Helm “Hey Mister, That’s me up on the Billboard (and on TV, in Print, on the Web, etc.)”

Ernest Hemingway wrote standing up. Marcel Proust and James Joyce wrote while lying in their respective beds. Ben Franklin sat in the bathtub when he was writing. Some writers write solely on legal pads, some only use No. 2 pencils, many in the electronic age still swim across the page with their fountain pens. Do these idiosyncrasies really help forge a literary career? Come meet five articulate and distinguished Northwest writers from a variety of genres, who will share their views on the creative process. Discover what makes a memoir a memoir, what makes fiction fiction, and what gives meaning to the personal essay. Take part in weekly writing prompts and exercises. And perhaps, walk away from this special series with a new sense of purpose and direction, not to mention an expanded reading list that should spark your imaginative powers for days to come.

Jelly Helm spent many years as executive creative director at Wieden+Kennedy in Portland and Amsterdam working on campaigns for Nike, Coke and Microsoft and was founder/director of W+K 12, Wieden+Kennedy’s experimental in-house school. He now heads Jelly Helm Studio whose clients include the Portland Timbers, Nike, Forest Ethics, Warner Brothers/DC Comics, Oregon Humanities, Wikipedia, Imperial Woodpecker, Infectious Diseases Research Institute, Red Hat, Dell, and other for profit and non-profit agencies. He has been featured in The New York Times, Mavericks at Work, and Adbusters. Helm says, “I’m interested in story, artisan values, and the open/free/shared knowledge movement. I’m interested in the role of story in the emerging culture.”

Prospective English students: Join us for a reception featuring a panel discussion and Q&A before each event in the Writing Center, Library room 203 from 6:15 - 7 p.m.