Writing & Reading at Centrum

An Interview with Dorothy Allison

Proclaimed “one of the finest writers of her generation” by the Boston Globe and “simply stunning” by the New York Times Book Review, Dorothy Allison's first novel, Bastard Out of Carolina, was a finalist for the 1992 National Book Award. Her best-selling second novel, the critically acclaimed Cavedweller, won the 1998 Lambda Literary Award for fiction. A chapbook of her performance work, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, was selected as a notable book of the year by the New York Times Book Review. Allison's small press books include Skin: Talking About Sex, Class and Literature; Trash; and The Women Who Hate Me. Allison serves on the advisory boards of the National Coalition Against Censorship and Feminists for Free Expression. 

 
Centrum: What is the process of writing like for you? How does an idea make its way from initial impulse to finished work?

 

Dorothy Allison: For me the problem isn’t beginning. I can begin a story without any problem at all. But the problem is that the process of writing novels takes so much time that by the middle of it you’ve got all these balls in the air. The difficulty is finishing, making all those balls come down in that perfect charming manner, complete, and done gracefully. How that is done varies a lot by book. When I teach, one of the things I tell my students is that in my experience the accordion method—expanding and contracting—works. Expand the story, based on language—language is the thing that I fall in love with—then look back on it and take out a lot of that language. Expansion and contraction. I widen widen widen and narrow narrow narrow, cutting out what is not truly serving either the story or the language or the character. I think perhaps that there are easier ways to go about it, but it works beautifully.

The wonder of writing is the magic of focus, and the intrusion of glory. You do all the grunt work, get your scene, build your characters, realize your place, drop yourself into that place through language into those people, and through the intrusion of magic, all of a sudden it all becomes real. It can be a sudden phrase, a realization of how it could go, or the perfect language that you’ve been waiting for, sometimes for years. It’s almost unexplainable. You make it happen by putting everything in place for it to happen.

An Interview with Rikki Ducornet

Rikki Ducornet is the author of seven novels, including The Fan Maker’s Inquisition—a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year—and The Jade Cabinet, a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. In 2004 she received the Lannan Literary Award in Fiction. She has also published six collections of poetry, two collections of short stories, and a book of nonfiction. In addition to her work as a writer, Ducornet has illustrated books by Robert Coover and Jorge Luis Borges. Her lithographs, drawings, and paintings are exhibited widely.

 
Centrum: How does the process of writing work for you? How does your writing germinate, and then come to fruition?

Rikki Ducornet: My first novel, The Stain, was set into motion by a powerful dream. That dream unleashed enough energy to fuel four novels—and this to my astonishment. I was an artist, after all, not a writer. Entering Fire, Phosphor in Dreamland, and The Fan Maker’s Inquisition were driven by an irrepressible, irresistible voice. Writing a novel can be a little like speaking in tongues! For example, I woke up one morning with the phrase “A fan is like the thighs of a woman: it opens and closes” running through my head. My novel’s narrator, a fan-maker, had arrived fully formed and clamoring for attention. She kept me busy for two-and-a-half years.

As a girl I lived in Cairo for a year, and my most recent novel, Gazelle, came from memories of that extraordinary time and place. It took decades for the book to surface. The process of writing is as mysterious as it is dynamic. Sometimes I think of it as alchemical—transforming the stuff of life into something new, possibly clairvoyant, hopefully lucid.

The Work of Dominique Morisseau

2006 Port Townsend Writers' Conference attendee Dominique Morisseau can speak to the importance of sharing truth through literature. Her choreopoem The Blackness Blues was produced at the University of Michigan in 1999—a time when attempts at ending affirmative action were being met with widespread student protests. Morisseau’s work filled a campus hunger for African-American theater and received wide critical and popular response, winning an NAACP Image Award.

Morisseau is an actor, director, and writer who writes about standards of identity, and where African-American women fit in a world of Eurocentric ideas about beauty. Currently based in Brooklyn, much of her work continues to be set in the Midwest. Her play Retrospect for Life, set in Detroit, features five women of starkly disparate backgrounds stuck inside an abortion clinic as protests rage outside. The women must learn to work together, and help each other survive. “No matter what socio-economic status people have, being in an abortion clinic levels the playing field,” Morisseau says. (The play is also noted for its modern take on ancient Greek choral technique. The clinic receptionist provides spoken-word commentary on the dramatic action as it unfolds.) Another play, Black at Michigan, recreates the events of campus protests at the University of Michigan through Chara, a student struggling to remain enrolled without financial aid.

Morisseau performs her spoken-word poetry all over the country. Her dramatic work has been seen at the Hip-Hop Theater Festival, the National Black Theater Festival, and the Cherry Lane Theater in New York City, among others. She remains proud of her award-winning collegiate plays, but adds: “I had that young writer’s arrogance—the belief that because my work came out of me that that’s what it needed to be. I didn’t revise. I’ve grown to understand that what comes out of you might be a nice place to begin, but it certainly ain’t the finish line.” 

An Interview with Rebecca Brown

Centrum: You’ve said that often the genesis of your work is a sound, or a phrase. What is that process like?

RB: The origins of my work are very mysterious to me. I don’t start off with a conscious agenda or mission, like “I’m going write this and here’s how I’m going to do it” as much as I start with something that has dredged up from my subconscious. I’ll hear a phrase— not gobbledygook, of course, but a phrase of words. One of these phrases came to me several months ago. I woke up one morning and the phrase was “Your head on a platter.” And I thought, where did that come from? But as I followed it, it ended up turning into a short piece. Another phrase years ago that came in my head was “I did not kill the child in the garden.” I wondered: Who’s the I? Who’s the child? Where’s the garden? And as I followed it, it turned into a piece. Hearing these phrases and pursuing them has happened a lot in the last couple of years. A lot of my writing comes from a sound and an almost conceptional and visual sense more than from a narrative logic.

C: Is your writing also affected by music? 

RB: Yes. I’m a big fan of pop, classical, opera—all kinds of music. It’s a big pleasure in my life. A couple weekends ago my spouse and I went to see the Seattle Winter Chamber Festival—we saw four chamber concerts in three days. It was just a lot of pleasure, a spiritual feeding of my soul and spirit.

The work I do is really rhythmic. I do syllable counts for most of my sentences. I’ll beat out the rhythm while I write. There’s ways that my writing is less like prose writing and more like a poet in terms of rhythm. Music is important to my writing in that way. Also, some of my pieces actually make references to certain pieces of music. I did an essay a couple of years ago that starts off with something that Mendelssohn wrote to a friend of his. And then in my most recent book there’s a quotation from a Tom Jones song. [Laughing] There’s Mendelssohn and Tom Jones, and anything in between. There are also certain things I’ve written that the rhythm really isn’t a big part of—that most people reading it wouldn’t say, “Wow, there’s a syllable count right there.” And I’ve written other pieces that people would notice that. I remember years ago, at a reading, this poet came up to me afterward, and said, “Did you know that whole piece is in iambic pentameter?” And I said, yeah, thanks for noticing, but another part of me thought, you jerk, of course I know that. I labored over that five hundred words for six months. But that’s the assumption, that of course the prose writer doesn’t know about rhythm. With a piece like that it’s very apparent that there’s a musical rhythm to it, and with other pieces the narrative [of the piece] is more apparent than the sound.

C: Did you grow up interested in both music and writing?

RB: Yes, in both. When I was eight years old I knew I was going to be a writer. I took vocabulary words from my vocabulary list and made a story about them. That year I also became an obsessive Beatles fan. I was just obsessed with the Beatles. I went and saw them when I was nine. Writing my first little novel as a kid and listening to Beatles music all happened at the same time. But I was always “I’m going to be a writer when I grow up” in a way that I wasn’t going to be a musician. I never took music lessons. I can’t read music and I can’t play an instrument. I’m just a fan, a real aficionado of it. Whereas I’ve really devoted myself to the study of writing—how it works, and its position in the world—in a way that’s just a pleasure for me.

C: As a teacher,  what do you tell students about rhythm and sound? Do you encourage them to read aloud?

RB: Absolutely. I encourage them to read aloud, and to read aloud to one another. If a student is reading a piece of a work aloud in a class, or a class situation, very often they’ll stumble over a certain sentence and I’ll say, That’s probably telling you that sentence needs revision. Writing, and spelling, and putting stories down on a piece of paper is really secondary to oral literature. People were telling stories before they were writing stories. They were singing poems before they were writing them.

C: Some of your bios—for example, the one that will appear in this magazine—say that you have an eclectic collection of classical, rock and roll, and “weird” CDs. What are your “weird” CDs?

RB: [Laughing] Yeah. There’s a series called Songs in the Key of Z. It’s really kind of outsider music, written before outsider music was a big deal. It’s just the bizarre and beautiful stuff of people who might not be musically trained, but have an ecstatic, crazy, wonderful vision. That’s one. This morning, I was listening to Wesley Willis. I actually take him seriously. His song “Rock and Roll McDonald’s” is a great song about American culture. Ditto his homages to rock bands. I mean, he’s got something. There’s a kind of purity to his work that’s really great. I listen to Daniel Johnston, I’m a big fan if his. I like theremin music. And gamelan music. I’ve been listening to a lot of international pop lately. I was in Spain, and I bought a whole bunch of Spanish pop from the sixties. It’s fascinating stuff. Wonderful. I bought some stuff from a band called Los Brincos, who had the Beatles haircuts. In Spanish, brincos means something bright and shining, and they had the same Beatles setup of three guitars and a drum. They also had similar kinds of harmonies. So there was this Spanish thing going on at the same time as the Beatles. Same thing in Japan. There was this band called The Spiders that was seven guitars and a drummer and it was just exceptional insanely passionate crazy jubilant Japanese pop. I love that stuff. And I’ve been listening to Brazilian psychedelic pop. When you think of Brazil, you think of Jobim and Gilberto—beautiful suave stuff—but they actually had psychedelic pop stuff in the sixties that’s nutty, and Brazilian. I just love it.

C: You wrote the libretto for The Onion Twins, the dance opera that premiered at Centrum in August, 2005. How did that process come about?

RB: The BetterBiscuitDance Company is a dance troupe co-run by Freya Wormus and Alex Martin. They had approached me years ago about writing a text for a movement they were doing, and I’d written a text for a twenty-minute performance. We really enjoyed the collaboration, and then Alex wanted to do a really big project. She had this fairy tale she wanted to do something with. She talked to me about it, and a third person who came into the collaboration was a person named Michael Katell, whose music I thought was really lovely. At one point when Mike and I were watching [a] BetterBiscuit [performance], I leaned over to him and said, “Mike, do you want to do an opera someday?” We were like: Oh sure, great, but then lo and behold Alex said, “Rebecca, Mike, do you guys want to do an opera?” And we said yes.

An opera, as we in the West understand it, is vocally-generated and vocally-based. This piece was really dance-generated. We started off with a plot which we took from a Swedish fairy tale, and switched it around to our own purposes. Mike and Alex and Freya and I spent a week up here at Centrum, and traded ideas about this fairy tale, and how we wanted it to go, then I wrote a libretto. It took several months to do that, and Alex started playing with movements, and then Mike composed this thing. The whole thing took more than two years in the labor of it. My part of was early on and over quickly. But the rest of them were working their tushes off. It was a really neat project. I wrote the libretto before I heard Mike’s music for it and basically re-wrote most of it because Mike’s music was very beautiful, serious music, and I’d had a lighter, more “Broadway” sense of the songs. I re-wrote with much more gravity than I had previously. Essentially he set the text to music, and then he and Alex set the dance and the music together.

C: Do you have plans to do something like that again in the future?

RB: My future plans are always up in the air.  I never know what I am going to do next. I’ll think of something or maybe make a plan with somebody. I would certainly enjoy doing something like that I again, but I never know what I’ll do next.

Conference Readings & Lectures

Tickets for Centrum's summer readings and performances go on sale May 1.

During the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, a rich and diverse gathering of prose writers and poets will read from their work and discuss their craft, politics, and passions.

Tickets for the Readings and Lectures series are available online up to one week prior to the series. The week of the Conference, tickets go on sale thirty minutes before each event, at the Wheeler Theater box office. Cost is $7 per event; $50 for a 10-event pass.

Sunday, July 15
7:30 pm Reading • Rikki Ducornet and Thomas Glave

Monday, July 16
8:30 am Lecture • Brian Evenson
7:30 pm Reading • Arthur Sze and Barbara Sjoholm

Tuesday, July 17
2:00 pm Lecture • Barbara Sjoholm
7:30 pm Reading • Eileen Myles

Wednesday, July 18
8:30 am Lecture • Camille Dungy

Thursday, July 19
8:30 am Lecture • Rikki Ducornet
7:30 pm Reading • Camille Dungy and Rebecca Brown

Friday July 20
8:30 am Lecture • Arthur Sze
7:30 pm Reading • Dorothy Allison (hosted by Goddard College's MFA in Creative Writing
Program)

Saturday July 21
8:30 am Lecture • Thomas Glave
2:00 pm Presentation • Nancy Kiefer
7:30 pm Reading • Brian Evenson and Joanna Howard
8:45 pm Book Signing in Building 204

Conference Class Descriptions

Rikki Ducornet Class Description

• Register for Rikki's workshop.

Our passwords are rigor and imagination, and our emblems the crystal and the flame—lucent and mutable. Revelation and subversion—these, too, will guide us. Writing is a process of revelation for both the reader and the writer, and our purpose will be to seize permission to write about anything (and to do it well!), and to subvert received ideas—about the world, the self, the nature of art. In conference and in class, we will discuss ways of heightening the text, opening it up, polishing it by the moon, dissolving boundaries. We will consider the ways in which our writing might be informed and extended by other disciplines and vehicles—hypertext, for example. Or an unusually constructed book.

    Please send fifteen pages of text to be discussed one-on-one and shared with the class. I would be eager to see these early. And bring fourteen copies with you to workshop. I will be referring to Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium and The Uses of Literature, as well as Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space and my own essay, “The Deep Zoo” (online at Fantastic Metropolis). And you might take a look at some hypertexts. For example: World of Awe and Patchwork Girl. Other things of interest: the new magazine Encyclopedia, the anthology: The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases, Michael Martone’s The Blue Guide to Indiana, and Gilgamesh as filmed by The Brothers Quay. All these are unusual vehicles for fiction.

Camille Dungy Class Description

• Register for Camille's workshop.

In this course, we’ll test the limits and expand the possibilities of nature writing.  We’ll explore how we write about our connection to (or disconnection from) the landscape that surrounds us and think about how poems and stories about the natural world can also engage social, political, and historic concerns. By engaging with work of writers from a variety of social, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds we’ll stretch the scope of who can and will write about nature.  Through readings and creative assignments, you’ll discover new ways to incorporate animals, landscape, the environment, or other manifestations of the natural world into your work. Whether it’s loved or reviled, cherished or practically dismissed, the natural world will be central to all of the texts we’ll read and write. Authors we will read include Lucille Clifton, Carl Phillips, Rita Dove, Rigoberto Gonzáles, Ellen Bryant Voigt, and Tayari Jones.

Brian Evenson Class Description

• Register for Brian's workshop.

Every new work of fiction enters into an already existent field of writing, but, as T.S. Eliot suggests, it can change that field, making us reconsider what’s come before. We’re particularly interested in thinking about how current fiction draws on and disrupts earlier traditions. We’ll look at fairy tales and contemporary writers who respond to fairy tales, stories and poems that appropriate or borrow from previous works, stories that steal and deform a genre of fiction to make something new. We’ll also do a lot of writing of our own, re-working and re-thinking themes and plots from previous works and figuring out how to continue to make it new while still acknowledging the interesting writers that have come before us.

Thomas Glave Class Description

• Register for Thomas's workshop.

Who exactly is the “other” to us, and why? And when, and how? And what does “other” mean to us as writers? Does/Must our writing language shift in crafting a character distinctly different from ourselves? How do we truly, imaginatively, bravely enter the skin, mind, heart of another whom we think of, have thought of, as an “other”? In this course, you’ll write either one nonfiction or fiction work, in either first, second, or third person, centering on a situation with characters (fiction) or real people (nonfiction) who differ from you (1) racially, and (2) in at least three of the following ways: gender, sexuality, religion, class, national origin, or religion.

Recommended reading (any of these might be helpful):

FICTION:
Nadine Gordimer, "Some are Born to Sweet Delight" (in Jump and Other Stories)
Lawrence Chua, Gold by the Inch
Toni Morrison, Sula
Rosario Ferre, The Youngest Doll
James Baldwin, "Going to Meet the Man" (in Going to Meet the Man)
Junot Diaz, Drown
Thomas Glave, "--And Love Them?" (in Whose Song? and Other Stories)

NON FICTION:
Andre Aciman, Letters of Transit
Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary
Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls
Carole Maso, Break Every Rule
Thomas Glave, "Fire and Ink: Toward a Quest for Language, History, and a Moral Imagination" (in Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent)

Barbara Sjoholm Class Description

• Register for Barbara's workshop.

A traveler’s tale, a natural history essay, a historical narrative, a spiritual journey, even a gastronomical adventure––all these forms can be used to record events of a life. This class will take a multi-genre approach to memoir, by emphasizing the variety of forms over the more traditional personal memoir. Exercises to generate new writing will combine with critique of individual works-in-progress that students may bring to the workshop. Bring no more than 10 pages. We’ll also discuss how selected authors use aspects of memoir to explore, interrogate, and celebrate their place in the world.

Arthur Sze Class Description

• Register for Arthur's workshop.

We will begin by asking each participant to select one pre-existing poem and will discuss how to revise, polish, and re-envision, if necessary; but we will also use these poems as a springboard to discuss larger issues. I will give an ekphrastic assignment based on a Joseph Cornell assemblage. We will look closely at the poems written and will discuss the possibilities of a poetic sequence as well as incorporate classic Chinese poetics. The workshop will be flexible to participant interests, and the majority of pre-existing work (eight pages of poetry, maximum length) will be discussed at individual conferences.

Suggested reading list:

Consider Joseph Cornell's assemblages
19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei by Eliot Weinberger

Artistic Director Rebecca Brown

We are honored to have Rebecca Brown guiding literature programs at Centrum.

City Lights published Rebecca Brown's tenth book of prose, The Last Time I Saw You, in 2005. The End of Youth, (City Lights) and Excerpts From A Family Medical Dictionary (University of Wisconsin Press) came out in 2003. Excerpts were published by Granta, UK, in February 2004.  She is the author of six other books of fiction including The Gifts of the Body, The Terrible Girls, Annie Oakley's Girl, The Haunted House, The Children’s Crusade, and What Keeps Me Here.

Brown's work has been awarded the Boston Book Review Award for fiction, The Lambda Literary Award, The Pacific Northwest Booksellers' Award, and a Washington State Governor’s Award. It has been widely anthologized, including stories in the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. It has been published in Great Britain and translated into Danish, Norwegian, German, Italian and Dutch. Four of her books have been translated into Japanese where they are published to much acclaim. She is part of a group called the Seattle Research Institute that does readings, lectures and publication. With Robert Corbett, she co-edited Experimental Theology, an anthology that contains poetry, fiction, essays, academic stuff and theater.

Brown collaborates frequently with artists in different disciplines. In 2005, she wrote a libretto for BetterBiscuitDance Company--a dance opera. Also in 2005, her first two act play, The Toaster, premiered at the New City Theater in Seattle. Her book The Terrible Girls was adapted for theater by About Face Theater in Chicago and performed there in 2001. The Los Angeles New Short Fiction Series adapted four pieces from The End of Youth for performance in November 2003. Brown also does a series of irreverent public talks sponsored by the Seattle Opera that offer pop culture/feminist/literary and goofy analysis of opera. With painter Nancy Kiefer, she did a book of text and image called Woman in Ill Fitting Wig.

Brown has read on book tours across the USA and in Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, Austria and Japan. She has taught in numerous settings, including the University of Washington, Extension, Pacific Lutheran University, Naropa University in Colorado, prisons, senior citizens' homes, libraries, and bars. For two years she was Writer-in-Residence at the Richard Hugo House Literary Center in Seattle where she served as Senior Teacher, met community members for writing consultations, and curated an eclectic reading/performance series. She has also curated readings for The Jack Straw Foundation, Red and Black Books, and her local NPR affiliate, served on selection panels for the Millay Arts Colony, The King County Arts Commission, the Bumbershoot Arts Festival, and the Washington State Arts Commission (where she championed the work of both traditional and non-mainstream writing). She has been awarded residencies at the Yaddo Colony, the Hawthornden Castle Writing Retreat in Scotland, the MacDowell Colony, Centrum, The Millay Colony, and Hedgebrook Cottages for Writers.

For many years her criticism, reviews, and essays appeared in the Seattle-based arts weekly The Stranger. Brown has lived in London and Italy and now makes her home in Seattle with her spouse, their cats, and an impressive collection of rock-n-roll, classical, and weird CDs. 

2007 Artist/Faculty

Learn how and why Artistic Director Rebecca Brown chose these writers.

Read each writer's workshop description.

Eileen Myles (Special Guest)
The New York Times has called Eileen Myles “a cult figure to a generation of post-punk females forming their own literary avant garde.” Myles headed to New York after college, becoming friends with Allen Ginsberg, and generally being a notable part of the turbulent punk and art scene that animated Manhattan’s East Village. Her books include Skies, on my way, Cool for You, School of Fish, Maxfield Parrish, Not Me, and Chelsea Girls. She is also a frequent magazine and newspaper contributor. more

Rikki Ducornet (Works in Progress)

• Register for Rikki's workshop.

Rikki Ducornet is the author of seven novels, including The Fan Maker’s Inquisition—a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year—and The Jade Cabinet, a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. In 2004 she received the Lannan Literary Award in Fiction. She has also published six collections of poetry, two collections of short stories, and a book of nonfiction. In addition to her work as a writer, Ducornet has illustrated books by Robert Coover and Jorge Luis Borges. Her lithographs, drawings, and paintings are exhibited widely. more

Camille Dungy (New Works)

• This workshop is full.
  

Author of What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison (Red Hen Press, 2006), Camille Dungy has received fellowships and awards from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, The Virginia Commission for the Arts, Cave Canem, and the American Antiquarian Society. She is assistant editor of Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (University of Michigan Press, 2006). Dungy is Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University.  more

Brian Evenson (New Works)

• Register for Brian's workshop.

Brian Evenson's six books of fiction include The Wavering Knife, Father of Lies, and Contagion. He is a senior editor at Conjunctions, one of the foremost magazines of innovative literature in the USA. His work has been reprinted in the O. Henry anthology of prize short stories. Evenson currently teaches at Brown, and has translated work by Christian Gailly, Jean Frémon, and Jacques Jouet. He has received numerous awards, including O. Henry prizes and NEA fellowships. more

Thomas Glave (New Works)

• Register for Thomas's workshop.

Thomas Glave is the author of the highly acclaimed collection, Whose Song? and Other Stories. His work has garnered numerous awards and honors. He is recognized as a dynamic, emerging voice in contemporary literature. Glave teaches at Binghamton, and frequently travels to Jamaica, where he works on issues of social justice. His edited anthology Our Caribbean, a gathering of gay and lesbian writing from the Antilles, will be published by Duke in 2007. more

Barbara Sjoholm (Works in Progress)

• Register for Barbara's workshop.

Barbara Sjoholm is a writer of memoir, personal essays, and travel narratives. She has also published a number of fiction and nonfiction works as Barbara Wilson. Her memoir Blue Windows: A Christian Science Childhood was nominated for a PEN award, and won a Lambda Award. Recent essays have appeared in the New York Times, Slate, the Harvard Review, the Antioch Review, the American Scholar, and the Michigan Quarterly Review. Her latest book, Incognito Street: How Travel Made Me a Writer, was released in November, 2006. more

Arthur Sze (Works in Progress)

• This workshop is full.
  

Arthur Sze is the author of five volumes of poetry, including his collection of selected poems The Redshifting Web, which was a finalist for the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines, and his translations have been published in Italy and China. The recipient of a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, three Witter Bynner Foundation Poetry Fellowships, and two Creative Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Sze currently directs the Creative Writing Program at the Institute for American Indian Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he has taught for more than a decade. more

Conference at a Glance

• Read faculty bios, browse class descriptions.

Engage creatively and critically with writers who work beyond the bounds of well-behaved American literature. Create new work. Rethink works-in-progress. Challenge your assumptions about what it means to be a writer in the world.

The Port Townsend Writers’ Conference blends a mix of conversation and workshop time with faculty members together with a series of public readings to ensure a rewarding listening, reading, and writing experience designed to inspire you to new levels in your work.

The Conference offers two different writing tracks: New Works and Works in Progress, both of which feature private one-on-one time with faculty. The New Works track emphasizes the creation of new works. Camille Dungy, Brian Evenson, and Thomas Glave offer new ways to unlock and free your writing voice. In the Works in Progress track, those engaged on an existing project are linked to the mentoring faculty of Rikki Ducornet, Barbara Sjoholm, and Arthur Sze.

Weave together work and ideas from across disciplines, while achieving new levels of work you may not have thought possible. Spend nights in intimate conversation with other writers, sharing new work in informal groups, or meet with an instructor for continued guidance.

Tuition for the workshop is $575 ($475 for returning participants who register a new participant) and includes admission to all Conference events. Room and board options range from $200 to $385. We also offer a "residency/all events" pass for $140 for writers who wish to spend time in residence or community with other writers, but choose not to attend workshop sessions. All readings and lectures and social events will be open to you.

Writing in the World: The Port Townsend Writers' Conference

What does it mean to be a writer in today's global world? At the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, July 15 - 22, 2007, you'll have the opportunity to not only create and revise works, but also to engage creatively and critically with writers who work beyond the bounds of well-behaved American literature. The 2007 Conference will focus on conversations about what it means to be a writer in the world.

Throughout the week, we will pursue a conversation with writers that Artistic Director Rebecca Brown calls American Internationalists. Brown notes, “Each of the writers I invited is actively engaged in both responding to and creating an American literary conversation with the world. Their work poses questions about American sensibilities and identity. They are not by any means part of a single aesthetic or school. Not one is ‘just another’ mainstream fiction writer of realist narrative or mainstream poet of the lyric revelation.

• Read faculty bios, browse class descriptions.

“In her new poems, Camille Dungy writes about an American past that still remains with us, creating narratives and monologues in free verse and form about people who escaped on the Underground Railroad. Rikki Durcornet is revered among innovative American fiction writers but her lush, dense, daring prose has a distinctly European or Middle Eastern sensibility.

“Thomas Glave has recently spent much of his creative and political life working for human rights in Jamaica. His prose styles—and I use the plural specifically here—are daring and expansive, as much informed by African American letters as by the literatures of the Caribbean that he is doing so much to promote. Barbara Sjoholm, founder of Women in Translation Press, is currently at work on essays about the relationship of women and the sea. She has also written a history of female pirates!

“The dark places in America are at the root of Brian Evenson’s amazing writing. He stares into the face of America’s history of violence. His most recent book, The Open Curtain, is a chilling fiction about the extremes of American religious fanaticism. Arthur Sze, Copper Canyon poet and beloved Centrum teacher, has been writing about America in a longer, broader context—particularly as it relates to traditions of Asian poetries. Our guest writer, Eileen Myles is the author of more than a dozen books of prose and poetry that carry on and expands beat and New York traditions. She ran for president once. We wish she had won.”