Imagine: a verdant park setting with classroom space, long stretches of beach, and only two short miles to such outdoor decks and restaurants such as the one pictured right. Now add nearly two-hundred of the most passionate and dedicated writers in the Pacific Northwest and you have something approaching the 2009 Port Townsend Writers' Conference.
It all starts Sunday, July 12, and features a full bevy of morning workshops, afternoon workshops, freewrites, craft lectures, and evening readings. Daily schedule is enclosed. We'll see you at the Fort!
THE 2009 PORT TOWNSEND WRITERS’ CONFERENCE
All faculty readings and lectures take place in the Wheeler Theater; all meals take place in the Fort Worden Commons.
Sunday July 12
3:30-5:30—Check-in outside the Centrum office building; cocktails on the bluff
5:30—Dinner
7:15—Welcome at the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater
7:30—Readings by Mark Doty; Kim Barnes
Monday July 13
7-8—Morning Freewrite Room D
8-9—Breakfast
9-11:30—Morning workshop
· Chris Abani Room D
· Kim Barnes Room M
· Adrian Castro Room F
· Denise Chávez Room K
· Tony Cohan Room L
· Mark Doty Room J
· Peter Orner Room O
· Robert Wrigley Room N
12-1:00—Lunch
2-3:30—Workshops and lectures in special topics
· Lana Ayers Room N
“The List Poem as Expression of Obsession and Ecstasy” Anthropologists have discovered that cultures which developed written language in short order began cataloging or making lists. It is human nature to want to keep the names of all the birds we see or tell our beloved all ways we love them. In this session we’ll explore various poets’ approaches to list poems—including the work of Christopher Smart, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Pablo Neruda, Joy Harjo, Lucille Clifton and Wallace Stevens—and delve in to generating one of our own.
· Wendy Call Room D
“Twelve Ways to Improve Your Nonfiction Prose”
We’ll discuss a dozen suggestions for improving the literary and narrative quality of your nonfiction prose, with examples from some of our best-loved nonfiction word-workers.
· Deborah Poe Room F
“Writing with Scientific Thought”
As prose and poetry writers, we will reflect on how one can use science to inspire creative writing. By looking at writing samples from such writers as Arthur Sze, Czeslaw Milosz, Primo Levi, Italo Calvino, Andrea Barrett, and Rikki Ducornet, we’ll consider how established writers use scientific ideas in their own work. Though our focus is not an introduction of scientific terms per se, we will use scientific thought as launching pads for creative writing, generating work during the workshop. The workshop is designed to provide new channels to access new work.
“The Short-Short Story”
In Remembrance of Things Past, Proust talks about the tyranny of rhyme forcing poets into some of their greatest lines. But prose writers have less experience with formal constraints, like rhyme, to put pressure on lines, and as a means to consider form in general. In this class we’ll examine the form of the short-short story, how it often works (and doesn’t), as well as how formal constraint can change the way we approach line and story. Because there’s so little space in a short-short, evocative outlines, shadows, implication, and suggestion hover at the edges. Short-shorts tend to rely on surprise, a hard, tight turn at the end. They can feel elliptical or fragmented, and are not always concerned with depth and complexity of character as much as with emotional gravity within a moment. Lydia Davis calls the short-short “a nervous form of story.” Charles Baxter says the short-short needs “surprise, a quick turning of the wrist toward texture, something suddenly broken or quickly repaired.” Mark Strand says, “Its end is erasure.”
“Introduction to Writing for Young Readers”
This workshop will touch on picture books on up through full-length YA novels, emphasizing story arc and structure, whether in fiction or narrative nonfiction. We will cover myths and assumptions about the field, talk about audience age categories, and discuss resources available to those interested in writing literature for children. Discussions will focus on story idea generation, story openings and endings, and examples from well-known children’s literature. In-class exercises, time permitting.
4-5—Lecture by Chris Abani: “Separating ‘Ritual’ from ‘Process’ in Fiction”
5:30—Dinner
7:30—Readings by Paul Lisicky, Sam Ligon
