Session One (approx. 8 minutes)- Dr. K. Mark Hilliard

The Expanded Imagination—A Journey into the Enchanted

Our expanded imagination is activated when our mind and spirit join together as they experience enchantment through sensory stimulation.

Much too often we wait for enchantment in the big things. We wait for our teens, adulthood, college, marriage, a perfect job, a vacation, then retirement . . . Or, we might simply push enchantment totally out of our lives as we grow into adulthood or move closer toward any of these new life experiences. We let enchantment go away, or pass us by, as our life-pages are turned.

Yet authentic enchantment, this journey into our expanded imagination, is meant to be something we experience every single day of our lives, at every turn, and at every age. Join with me in this brief session on how to activate this inner place of the expanded imagination within your own spirit and soul.

Session Two (approximately 12 minutes) - Dr. K. Mark Hilliard

Crowdancing and the Cherokee Storyteller’s Bag: A Memoir of My Expanded Imagination

This session is a pre-release of, and a reading from, my newest book. Crowdancing’s story will take you into the midst of the ancient Cherokee ceremonies of the 1600s; into the enchanted lands of faerie and fae and dragon and crow; into the hiding places of the Little-People of the Cherokee; into the homes of the Faerie-Folk of Ireland; and near and far beyond.

These stories will take you into an enchanted world of unseen realms on earth and realms afar;

into the lives of The-Cherokee-Real-People, and their real-places; places that once stood within time itself, and some still do; yet by some magical mystical means, these places now transcend both time and space, and the hearer of these stories, along with them. It is a journey into my expanded imagination. And you are invited to come along!

But that-is-enough . . . for now! Let me begin my first tale. I will pull it from my Bundle-of-Talk; I will draw it from deep within the Storyteller’s bag; The Storyteller’s bag in which all of Crowdancing’s stories are held captive, only to be released as the stories are told.

O-E-A . . . Yah!

What I have said is true.

And I, the Storyteller, do tell this tale.”

Session Three (approximately 10 minutes) - Professor Jessa R. Sexton

Blocking Writer’s Block

You know the feeling: you’re staring at the blank screen or blank piece of paper—and your brain is completely blank as well. It’s writer’s block. But the good news is it happens to us all—it’s honestly part of the creative process.

That doesn’t mean you give up. It means you block that writer’s block. Here’s how...