Meets for four Wednesdays.

Instructors: Gerry Lanosga and Celeste Williams
Through use of the Internet, archival research found in libraries and other publicly accessible places, instructors Gerry Lanosga and Celeste Williams, both experienced researchers and writers, will show how writers of all genres utilize research methods in their writing. Participants will learn methods that will enhance every aspect of their writing, whether it be fiction or non-fiction. This class will be hands-on. Participants will be encouraged to bring their own writing projects.

Sponsored by the PEN America’s Press Freedom Incentive Fund

Celeste Williams spent 25 years as a journalist, working as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers in Alabama, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Indiana. She won many regional and national awards for her work, including Scripps-Howard Writer of the Year and Reporter of the Year for a series on extreme poverty in Mississippi. She served on the national board of the  Casey Journalism Center for Children & Families, and is currently president of the board for the Indiana Writers Center. Her play, “More Light,” about abolitionist Frederick Douglass, debuted in 2017 at Conner Prairie Interactive History Park.

Gerry Lanosga is an assistant professor at Indiana University’s Media School, Bloomington, with a special interest in journalism’s intersections with public policy through investigative reporting and the use of freedom of information laws. He worked nine years as an investigative producer at WTHR-TV, the NBC affiliate in Indianapolis, where his work won numerous state, regional and national honors, including the duPont-Columbia award, the George Foster Peabody award, Sigma Delta Chi’s public service award, and the Freedom of Information medal from Investigative Reporters and Editors.