Writing & Reading at Centrum

Rebecca Brown and Ilya Kaminsky

We have just a little over a month to wait until the Autumn Writers' Intensive with Rebecca Brown and Ilya Kaminsky, and very limited space remains.

More information, including registration information, can be found by following this link, as well as by clicking on the text to the right.

Rebecca will be leading a workshop in generating new kinds of fiction; Ilya's class will focus on poetry. Housing is in Centrum's artist cabins on the hillsides, with private rooms and breathtaking views of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Admiralty Inlet.

2009 Writers' Lineup Coming Soon!

Artistic Director Cristina García has created a series of workshop events and readings and lectures series that will be held at Fort Worden State Park throughout the year.

Three workshop events--one in May, one in July, and one in September--will be punctuated with multiple readings, lectures, and special events at the Fort.

The lineup of readers, lecturers, and workshop leaders includes Carolyn Forché, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Joe Stroud, Bill Ransom, Mark Doty, Chris Abani, Peter Orner, Adrian Castro, Denise Chávez, Liliana Valenzuela, Cynthia Kadohata, Tony Cohan, Kim Barnes, Robert Wrigley, Quincy Troupe,  and many, many others.

Readings, lectures, and workshop dates are set, and will be available soon!

Registration is currently available for the October 9-12 Autumn Writers' Intensive with Rebecca Brown and Ilya Kaminsky. For more information, including registration, follow this link or call Centrum at 360.385.3102, x114. 

Two Conference Workshop Spaces Open

Once space in the Selah Saterstrom nonfiction workshop and one space Kim Addonizio poetry workshop have opened up. If you are planning on making the Conference part of your summer writing plans and would like to register for either of these workshops, let us know at 360.385.3102, x131.

If you are already registered, we'll see you at the Fort on Sunday!

Yoga for Writers

If you are a 2008 Conference participant we want to make sure you know that your brain isn't the only thing that can get worked-out during the week.

Madrona MindBody Institute, Fort Worden's "well-being and moving arts program,"  is generously offering Conference participants a discount on their schedule of Dance, Pliates, Yoga, and Nia classes. You'll find a discount card in your participant packet when you check-in.

View their class schedule, and see what else is going on at the Fort while you are here, at our online Fort calendar.

One Space Available in Poet Gary Lilley's Workshop

One spot only has opened up in the Gary Lilley poetry workshop, and is the only available space in the sold-out Port Townsend Writers' Conference. To register for this workshop, or to add your name to the mailing list for our other workshops, please call the Centrum registrar at 360.385.3102, x114. 

Gary Lilley is the author of four books: Black Poem, Alpha Zulu, The Reprehensibles, and The Subsequent Blues. Lilley has been a poet-in-residence at WritersCorps, Young Chicago Authors, and The Poetry Center of Chicago, and received the DC Commission on the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. He teaches Creative Writing at Warren Wilson College.

A note from Gary:

"This poetry workshop will be fueled by the premise that truths are more important than facts, and that poems represent the blurring of real experience with those that are completely created. Actual occurrences are the frames, or the skeletons of poems, but a pulse, a layered muscularity, and the presence of fluids, the sparks of the imagined, if you will, give poems the power to walk us down the street into the discovery within situations that we personally have not seen. Too often we are told to write what we know, facts, instead of what we can believe, truths. This workshop will explore tactile and concrete details, syntax and diction, as well as other tools to use in making your poems come alive. It is expected that draft poems will be created daily. This workshop is appropriate for beginning and experienced poets."

In Memoriam: Poet Jason Shinder

I would like to mention something about the passing of Jason Shinder. Jason recently passed on after a long battle with cancer. His contribution to the art of writing and the arts in general was vast, purposeful, and I believe will prove lasting, whether it is through his own books, his teaching, or his development of the YMCA National Writer's Voice. I did not know Jason well, but in two or three brief meetings he made me feel as if I had known him a good long time. In his indirect way he taught me things about writing and living deliberately. I have continued to learn from him as I read his poems and his anthologies created as guides for young writers and lovers of the art of poetry.

His life was dedicated to the arts. My first experience with Jason was watching him open up a night of dancing at an MFA residency with utterly compelling moves. This display of quiet excellence echoed itself throughout my time as a student at Bennington. I never had Jason as a teacher, but I was able to witness how, in his quiet way Jason continually worked for art as an artist and teacher. He carried his student’s poems everywhere and worked them over obsessively. I watched him stop in mid-conversation in the student cafe and pull out a student packet, mark it with some notes, stuff it back in his bag and continue his conversation.

He read a series of poems one evening that chronicled his mother’s battle with a terminal illness. The poems were raw, tender, and moving. My final direct interaction with Jason was at a summer residency when he randomly sat down next to me during dinner. I asked him how he was doing. He casually remarked that things were going well, and that he was just trying to write as well as he could. This small bit of conversation became a mantra of teaching advice for me over the next few years. There is so much out there. There is so much to do. We can write poems to make people laugh, chronicle illness, compete with Dante, but no matter what, at the core, we strive to just write as well as we can.

He will be missed.

Port Townsend Writers' Conference Now At Capacity

The core morning workshops and the special afternoon workshops, as well as the Residency-Only option at the Port Townsend Writers' Conference are now all at capacity. However, we have started a waiting list for all options. To put your name on this list, please call our Registrar at 360.385.3102, x114.

In the meantime, there are a number of ways to experience literary programming at Centrum this year.

• Our 2008 Readings and Lectures Series the week of July 13-July 19 is part of the week-long summer Conference, and is open to the public. All readings and lectures are free. 
• And for those of you looking for an intimate workshop experience, Rebecca Brown and Ilya Kaminsky will be leading an autumn weekend intensive the weekend of October 9-12. Space is limited for this--and all--literary workshops, but registration is available now.

Richard Kenney Poetry Reading April 27

Poet Richard Kenney will be giving a reading this Sunday at the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater. The reading will start at 1:30 pm, with a book-signing and reception to follow.

Kenney, who teaches poetry in the undergraduate and Master of Fine Arts programs at the University of Washington, writes poems as informed by science as they are by Celtic and classical literatures. He was a faculty member at the Port Townsend Writers' Conference during nineteen-eighties, teaching and writing alongside such writers as James Welch, Marvin Bell, and Tobias Wolff.

Influenced by the geological work of John McPhee, as well as by such poets as Keats, Hopkins, Yeats, Auden, Frost, and Larkin, Kenney writes about human evolution and language origins, the cognitive basis of poetic forms, magical reasoning, and the Darwinian lives of subliterary species such as jokes, riddles, proverbs, charms, spells, nursery rhymes, and weather-saws.

Kenney’s books include "The Evolution of the Flightless Bird", "Orrery", and "The Invention of the Zero". His most recent book, "The One-Strand River", is a collection of poems from 1994 to 2007.

In this book, from which he will be reading on Sunday, Kenney tells tales of loves, births, and politics—in lively, quicksilver language that surprises at every turn. He often strikes a note that is rare in contemporary poetry—the satirical attack, with an eye on the news of the day—and ponders the “one-strand river” that is the sea, with its one encircling shore and its tidal pull on both the landscape and the human heart.

For a number of years Kenney led the UW creative-writing summer seminar in Rome. His work has appeared in such magazines as The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, among many others.

The afternoon reading is free, and is presented as part of a new partnership between Centrum and Peninsula College’s Foothills Writers' Series.

Waiting List Available for Writers' Conference

Although all of the core morning workshops at the 2008 Port Townsend Writers' Conference have filled, a few spots may open up over the next couple of months. To put your name on the waiting list, simply call the Centrum registrar at 360.385.3102, x114.

Waiting lists for all workshops have been started, including those for Chris Abani, Kim Addonizio, Kathleen Alcala, Brian Evenson (pictured), Lesley Hazleton, Gary Lilley, and Selah Saterstrom.

Waiting lists are also available for the Residency Only option.

Port Townsend Writers' Conference Workshops Full

All of the core morning workshops at the Port Townsend Writers' Conference have filled. However, there are still many ways to be a part of the literary scene at Fort Worden this summer.

The Residency Only Option offers you not only time and space to write, but allows you to do so while attending our faculty readings and lectures; meeting, dining, and gathering with like-minded writers from all over the region and the country; and the rare opportunity to do all of this in one of the truly inspirational environments of the Pacific Northwest. Please note: There is only one more space left for this option!

To register for this option please follow this link or call our Registrar at 360.385.3102, x114.

Register for Port Townsend Writers' Conference

If your summer plans include the week-long Port Townsend Writers' Conference, now is the time to register! Our core morning workshops are currently full, but afternoon workshops and freewrites are available.  If the full workshop is what you're interested in, we can place you on a wait list, as space may become available over the next couple of months.
 

If you don't plan on registering for an afternoon workshop, but would like to spend a week at a writing retreat in an inspirational, supportive environment, you can also register for the Residency Only option and attend the readings and lectures for free while taking your own work to the next level.  Please note that there is only one space available for this option.

Registration is available by following this link, as well as by calling the Centrum Registrar at 360.385.3102, x114

Centrum's Facebook Page

Whether you are a workshop participant, performance attendee, donor, volunteer, resident, or interested observer, we hope you will take a moment to visit our new Facebook page.

Facebook allows each of you to connect with us and extend your experience at Centrum. Upload your photos and videos. Talk about your past or upcoming workshops, review performances and readings. In large measure, 'our' page is 'your' page.

So take a look, and let us know what you think. We're exploring whether or not to create specific social networking sites for each of our major program areas. What do you think? (Now you have your first discussion topic on Facebook.)

The Magical Realism of Kathleen Alcala

Only three spaces remain in Mexican-American magical realist writer Kathleen Alcalá's fiction workshop. 

Kathleen Alcalá is the author of a short story collection, Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist, and three novels: Spirits of the Ordinary, The Flower in the Skull, and Treasures in Heaven. Her collection of essays, The Desert Remembers My Name is now available from the University of Arizona Press.

Her work has received the Western States Book Award, the Governor's Writers Award, a Pacific Northwest Bookseller's Award, and a Washington State Book Award. She also recently served on the board of Richard Hugo House.

Kathleen will be teaching at the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, from July 13 to July 20, 2008. Registration is available here, as well as by calling Centrum at 360.385.3102, x114. 

Writers' Conference Poetry Workshops Now Full

The poetry workshops at the Port Townsend Writers' Conference are now full, and space is shrinking rapidly in the remaining fiction and nonfiction workshops. Chris Abani's fiction workshop has only one space left, as well, with only a handful of spaces left in the nonfiction workshops of Selah Saterstrom and Lesley Hazleton.

For poets, there are still many options for enjoying a week of retreat and renewal during the Conference!

• Sign up for the "Residency Only" option. You pay room and board, and then use your time to read and write, and can attend all readings and lectures for free.
• Sign up for the "Afternoon Workshops" option. This gets you into all the afternoon workshops, including workshops with Copper Canyon poet Peter Pereira and Jeannine Hall Gailey.
• Sign up for the Brian Evenson "Start Here" workshop, which is a foundational course in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction techniques. This class is appropriate for all writers--from beginners to those who are looking for new ways of thinking about their work and finding new ways of telling stories.
• Or, to tailor a reading and writing experience that best fits your needs, call program manager Jordan Hartt at 360.385.3102, x131, and we will figure out how to maximize your time during the week!

Conference space at this point is 96% full, so make sure to reserve your space or put your name down on the waiting list!

Re-thinking Two-Dimensional Stereotypes

Port Townsend Writers' Conference faculty member Lesley Hazleton will lead a special afternoon workshop on Saturday, July 19, in how to bring historical figures to life in your writing.

"Imagining the past is what most writers do," Lesley says. "Whether in fiction or non-fiction, we re-create the past and shape it to reveal new meaning. But what happens when all we seem to have are two-dimensional stereotypes, as in Mary the virgin or Jezebel the harlot? How do we bring legends back to multi-dimensional life? Think of a historical or mythical figure who intrigues you as we explore the interface between research and imagination, the personal and the factual. Brief in-class writing is part of the deal." 

Registration for the afternoon workshops is available by following this link. In addition, Hazleton will be leading a week-long core workshop in writing creative nonfiction.

WANTED: Bloggers

When we redesigned this site last year, we had a vision that at some point, we could invite community members to post/write for the site, sharing their passion with other members of the Centrum community.

That time is NOW!

If you are passionate about writing and would like to share your knowledge and a sense of discovery with others, we want YOU. Please contact Keven Elliff at keven at centrum dot org for more information.

Brenda Miller to Lead Workshops in the Lyric Essay

During the 2008 Port Townsend Writers' Conference, creative nonfiction writer Brenda Miller will be leading workshops in the lyric essay.

Miller spends the academic year as associate professor of English at Western Washington University in Bellingham. Her collection of essays, Season of the Body was a finalist for the PEN American Center Book Award and she has received a number of Pushcart Prizes for her work. Her essays have appeared in such periodicals as the Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and the Sun.

Miller is also widely acclaimed as a popular teacher of writing. The textbook that she co-authored with fellow WWU writing professor Suzanne Paola, Telling it Slant, is used in classrooms all over the world. At the Conference, she will lead workshops in the lyric essay on both Wednesday, July 16 and Thursday, July 17, and will be part of a panel presentation on Friday, July 18.

We are very excited and grateful to have her at the Conference this year! To register for her workshops or for any of the Conference workshops, please follow this link. 

Writers' Workshops

Registration is open for the 2008 Centrum Writers' Conference, July 13 through July 20, at Fort Worden State Park, Port Townsend. Tuition is $495 and includes admission to all conference events. Scholarships are available.

Room and board options range from $200 to $390, depending on meal plan. Special-topic workshops are $50 each or $195 for five. Register online, or call 360-385-3102, ext. 114. For more information, contact Jordan Hartt, program director, at jordan(at)centrum(dot)org or 360-385-3102, ext. 131.

Now in its 36th year, the Writers Conference was founded by novelist Bill Ransom in 1973, and is known for its intensive, week-long workshops by nationally known authors. New this year are individual workshops on special topics.

Fort Worden State Park has contracted with a new food service company, Bon Appetit, known for the quality of its cuisine and use of organic, locally-grown food.

Writers don't have to sign up for workshops--one option is to pay for room and board during the conference and spend the majority of one's time writing. Or, pay for room and board and choose individual workshops to attend. Writers who do sign up for the morning conference workshops can attend special topic workshops free.

Special Visiting Faculty to Appear at 2008 Writers' Conference

We are pleased to announce that the following writers will be appearing at the Port Townsend Writers' Conference in 2008! These writers will give afternoon workshops to complement and round out the workshops that participants take with our morning workshop faculty. These workshops are free to all participants registered for a core morning workshop. For rates and registration information, please visit http://www.centrum.org/admin/register.html. The Port Townsend Writers' Conference takes place July 13 through July 20.

• Poets Jeannine Hall Gailey and Peter Pereira will offer afternoon workshops in special forms of poetry. Their workshops will take place on alternating days from Monday through Thursday.
• Children's literature author Deb Lund will offer workshops in the craft of children's literature Monday through Friday.
• Ellie Mathews will offer workshops in the craft of writing for young readers on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
• Nonfiction writer and Bellingham Review editor Brenda Miller will offer a two-day workshop session in the lyric essay Wednesday and Thursday, and participate in a panel on Friday along with the editors of the Crab Creek Review, Willow Springs, and Tidepools.
• Narrative journalist Patricia Morrison Coate will present a Wednesday workshop in writing feature articles for magazines.
• Nonfiction writer Brandon Schrand will offer a Thursday workshop in writing the memoir.
• Morning workshop faculty member Kathleen Alcalá will present an afternoon workshop in using maps to imagine and create new stories.
• In addition, there are several other workshops being added, that we will announce as soon as we have lined up the dates! Workshop registration for the summer Conference is already half full, after only one week of registrations, so if your summer plans include the Port Townsend Writer's Conference/Retreat make sure to reserve your place soon. 

Registration Opens for the Port Townsend Writers' Conference

Registration has opened for the 2008 Port Townsend Writers' Conference! You can follow the links shown at the right, or go straight to the registration page by following this link: http://www.centrum.org/admin/register.html.

Artistic Director Rebecca Brown P-I Writer-in-Residence

Rebecca Brown, Artistic Director for Literature at Centrum, is Writer-in-Residence at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for the month of November. (You can read her contributions "A Ventriloquist" and "The Drunken Pilot" here.)

Brown is one of eleven Pacific Northwest writers--one for each month of the year--selected by the newspaper. The other featured writers are Tim Egan, David Guterson, Sherman Alexie, Charles R. Cross, Pete Dexter, Ivan Doig, Ellen Forney, Charles Johnson, Jonathan Raban, Tom Robbins, and Ann Rule.

Rebecca Brown not only has eleven books to her credit, she is well-known for her teaching, activism and outreach efforts in the Puget Sound literary community. Brown was the first writer in residence at Richard Hugo House and has taught there frequently ever since.

She is the co-founder of the Jack Straw Writers Program. Her best-known work is "The Gifts of the Body," a haunting novel about an AIDS caregiver that won the Lambda Literary Award. Her 1986 debut novel, "The Haunted House," recently has been reissued in a new paperback edition.

Brown often stretches literary boundaries, having collaborated with painter Nancy Kiefer on a book ("Woman in Ill-Fitting Wig"), as well as writing the libretto for a dance opera ("The Onion Twins") which premiered at Centrum in 2005. Her work often appears in anthologies and has been translated into Japanese, German, Danish, Italian and Norwegian.

Chris Abani, Kim Addonizio, and Lesley Hazelton Slated for Centrum

We're thrilled to announce the first three faculty hirings for the 2008 Port Townsend Writers' Conference, taking place at Fort Worden State Park July 13 to July 20: poet and novelist Chris Abani, poet and novelist Kim Addonizio; and nonfiction writer Lesley Hazelton.

The prose of Chris Abani, who was once a political prisoner in Nigeria, includes the novels The Virgin of Flames, GraceLand, and Masters of the Board, as well as the novellas Becoming Abigail and Song For Night. His poetry collections include Hands Washing Water, Dog Woman, Daphne's Lot, and Kalakuta Republic. Abani teaches at the University of California, Riverside, and has won multiple awards for his work.

Kim Addonizio is the author of four books of poetry: The Philosopher's Club, Jimmy & Rita, Tell Me, and What Is This Thing Called Love, which was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award. She also has a collection of stories, In the Box Called Pleasure. Her first novel, Little Beauties, was published in 2005. Her new novel, My Dreams Out in the Street, was released in July.

A former psychologist and political journalist with deep roots in both Judaism and Catholicism, Lesley Hazelton reported from Israel for Time magazine, specializing in religious and social and cultural issues. She has since written feature articles on Middle East politics for, among others, the New York Times, Esquire, Vanity Fair, The Nation, and Harper's. Her most recent book is Jezebel: the Untold Story of the Bible's Harlot Queen. Previous books include three volumes of Middle East reportage: Israeli Women, Where Mountains Roar, and Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

In advance of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, the next Writers' events at Centrum will include the Advanced Revision Workshop with Pam Houston, November 1-4, 2007 and a weekend writers' workshop February 21-24, 2008.

Pam Houston Workshop November 1-4, 2007

ADVANCED REVISION WORKSHOP FOR FICTION WRITERS
November 1-4, 2007
$600 includes all lunches, dinners, and lodging.

At this advanced workshop you’ll have the chance to work with acclaimed writer Pam Houston, who will provide intensive focus on revision techniques to help you take your story or novel excerpt to its full potential. As part of the workshop, you’ll also receive free admission to the Saturday, November 3, 7:30 pm reading at the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater.

For Workshop Registration, register on our secure online site.

Pam Houston is the author of two collections of linked short stories: Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat. Her stories were selected for the Best American Short Stories anthology in both 1990 and 1999 and the Best American Short Stories of the Century anthology. She has also released a collection of essays. Her first novel, Sighthound, was published in 2005.

Summer Tickets Now On Sale

We're pleased to announce that tickets are now on sale for Centrum's summer readings and performances at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend. Highlights of the 2007 summer season include:

• Writers Eileen Myles, Arthur Sze, Thomas Glave Camille Dungy and others whom Artistic Director Rebecca Brown says “work beyond the bounds of well-behaved American literature” at the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference.
• Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec and Trio Solisti anchor the Port Townsend Chamber Music Festival, led by new Artistic Director Helen Callus.
• Centrum's June 10 special sneak preview of the Seattle Men’s Chorus’ new show “Scared Faithless,” a look at religion through the lens of experiences by gay men and women.
• South African teaspoon slide guitar player Hannes Coetzee and Grammy winning vocalist Laurie Lewis performing at the combined Voiceworks/Port Townsend Slide & Steel Festival.
• National Heritage Award fellows Liz Carroll and Paul Dahlin, along with the Carolina Chocolate Drops and dozens more, turning up the temperature during the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes.
• Roberta Gambarini, the Banda Brothers Latin All-Stars and NEA Jazz Master Gerald Wilson joining Artistic Director John Clayton and others at Jazz Port Townsend, Washington’s longest-running summer jazz festival.
• The Port Townsend Country Blues Festival, the nation’s largest gathering of acoustic blues musicians, welcomes National Heritage Award winners Eddie Pennington, Henry Gray and John Cephas, as well as Robert Belfour and many more.

Information on ordering tickets is available on our Information Center site.

Scholarship Suppport for Writers' Conference

This time each year, workshop sessions at the Port Townsend Writers' Conference tend to fill up. If you haven't signed-up for this stimulating week of thinking and writing, you may wish to do so soon.

Centrum is committed to making workshops a reality for as many as possible. Thanks to the generous support of donors, corporations, foundations and other attendees, we hope to give out more than $70,000 in scholarships to our various programs, including the Writers' Conference.

This year's conversation on "Writing in the World" will benefit from a diverse array of participants. Please spread the word--we have scholarship support to offer writers. Our scholarship information packet is available on Centrum's Information Center site.

The Conference is almost upon us--we look forward to seeing you here in Port Townsend!

Centrum Seeks Development Director

Centrum is seeking a Development Director to develop, nurture, and manage over 1,500 individual and institutional relationships to inspire $1,200,000 million in annual charitable giving. If you're interested in joining a dynamic and passionate team, read more at The Centrum Information Center blog.

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.”