Writing at Centrum

Saturday Readings & Lectures at PTWC

Today is Saturday, July 18, 2009 - day 7 of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference. It's the final day of public activities at the Conference. Thank you for supporting the Conference, and a special thanks to Humanities Washington for helping to make our readings and lectures free to the public.

We have one craft lecture and one reading open to the public today. Each takes place at the Wheeler Theater. Both events are free.

4pm Lecture: Tony Cohan: “Managing Your Writing Mind”
7:30pm Reading: Chris Abani, Adrian Castro

Visit our Readings and Lectures page for complete schedule information.

Today is Saturday, July 18, 2009 - day 7 of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference. It's the final day of public activities at the Conference. Thank you for supporting the Conference, and a special thanks to Humanities Washington for helping to make our readings and lectures free to the public.

We have one craft lecture and one reading open to the public today. Each takes place at the Wheeler Theater. Both events are free.

4pm Lecture: Tony Cohan: “Managing Your Writing Mind”
7:30pm Reading: Chris Abani, Adrian Castro

Visit our Readings and Lectures page for complete schedule information.

We have one craft lecture and one reading open to the public today. Each takes place at the Wheeler Theater. Both events are free.

4pm Lecture: Tony Cohan: “Managing Your Writing Mind”
7:30pm Reading: Chris Abani, Adrian Castro

Visit our Readings and Lectures page for complete schedule information.

We have one craft lecture and one reading open to the public today. Each takes place at the Wheeler Theater. Both events are free.

4pm Lecture: Tony Cohan: “Managing Your Writing Mind”
7:30pm Reading: Chris Abani, Adrian Castro

Visit our Readings and Lectures page for complete schedule information.

Friday Readings & Lectures at PTWC

Today is Friday, July 17, 2009 - day 6 of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference.

We have one craft lecture and a special session of participant readings open to the public today. Each takes place at the Wheeler Theater. Both events are free.

4pm Lecture: Mark Doty: “Complicating the Poem”
7:30pm: Readings by Conference Participants   

Visit our Readings and Lectures page for complete schedule information.

We have one craft lecture and a special session of participant readings open to the public today. Each takes place at the Wheeler Theater. Both events are free.

4pm Lecture: Mark Doty: “Complicating the Poem”
7:30pm: Readings by Conference Participants   

Visit our Readings and Lectures page for complete schedule information.

We have one craft lecture and a special session of participant readings open to the public today. Each takes place at the Wheeler Theater. Both events are free.

4pm Lecture: Mark Doty: “Complicating the Poem”
7:30pm: Readings by Conference Participants   

Visit our Readings and Lectures page for complete schedule information.

Thursday Readings & Lectures at PTWC

Today is Thursday, July 16, 2009 - day 5 of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference.

We have one craft lecture and one reading open to the public today. Each takes place at the Wheeler Theater. Both events are free.

4pm Lecture: Kim Barnes: “Objectifying the Villain in Personal Nonfiction”
7:30pm Reading: Robert Wrigley    

Visit our Readings and Lectures page for complete schedule information.

Today is Thursday, July 16, 2009 - day 5 of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference.

We have one craft lecture and one reading open to the public today. Each takes place at the Wheeler Theater. Both events are free.

4pm Lecture: Kim Barnes: “Objectifying the Villain in Personal Nonfiction”
7:30pm Reading: Robert Wrigley    

Visit our Readings and Lectures page for complete schedule information.

Tuesday Readings & Lectures at PTWC

Today is Tuesday, July 14, 2009 - day 3 of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference.

We have one craft lecture, and one reading open to the public today. Each takes place at the Wheeler Theater. Both events are free.

4pm Lecture: Denise Chávez: “Plática/Talk on Writing Borders”
7:30pm Reading: Peter Orner, Cristina García

Visit our Readings and Lectures page for complete schedule information.

Monday Readings & Lectures at PTWC

Today is Monday, July 13, 2009 - day 2 of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference.

We have one craft lecture, and one reading open to the public today. Each takes place at the Wheeler Theater. Both events are free.

4pm Lecture: Chris Abani: “Separating ‘Ritual’ from ‘Process’ in Fiction”
7:30pm Reading: Paul Lisicky, Sam Ligon

Visit our Readings and Lectures page for complete schedule information.

The Countdown: Twelve Days Remaining!

As we celebrate the last day of June, we also look ahead to next month! Only twelve days remain until the beginning of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, an intense week-long celebration of literature and the writing life. Enclosed is a picture taken by Centrum alumna Elizabeth Thorpe during the 2008 Conference.

We'll be keeping our Readings and Lectures series free and open to the public this year, thanks to a generous grant from Humanities Washington. Every evening at 7:30, two writers will read from new work. It all starts the evening of July 12, with readings by National Book Award-winning poet Mark Doty and famed western novelist and nonfiction writers Kim Barnes, whose new manuscript-in-progress is set in Saudi Arabia.  

The Countdown Continues...Thirteen Days To Go!

We're now thirteen days--fewer than two weeks!--away from the thirty-sixth annual Port Townsend Writers' Conference. To celebrate, here's a picture taken during last year's Conference. Very Northwest: the water, the rocks, the wet sand, the empty blue sky.

For those of you who are not registered for the Conference, there are still ways to enjoy everything that the Conference has to offer. The public Readings and Lectures series will present such writers as Chris Abani, Kim Barnes, Mark Doty, Peter Orner, and Robert Wrigley giving free public readings and craft lectures every afternoon at 4 pm and every evening at 7:30 pm. (The week of July 12-18)

The only other way to still get involved is through the afternoon workshops. These go from 2 to 3:30 pm every afternoon, featuring a full spectrum of topics in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. For more information, please call 360.385.3102, x131, or browse our afternoon workshop page.

Countdown to the Port Townsend Writers' Conference

There are only twenty-four days to go until to the thirty-sixth annual (and largest ever) Port Townsend Writers' Conference! To celebrate, Conference alum and 2009 resident Elizabeth Thorpe sent us this beautiful picture of the sunrise breaking open above Whidbey Island; or to bring in Homer: dawn showing again, with rosy fingers.

Check-in starts Sunday, July 12 at 3:30 pm for the thirty-sixth consecutive Conference. Everything is completely sold out, except for the afternoon workshops, but the readings and lectures (see link to the right) are free to the public and should be amazing this year.

Kim Barnes Interview

There's a great new interview with novelist and memoir-writer Kim Barnes up at Brevity magazine.

Barnes’ novel "A Country Called Home" was published by Knopf in 2008. She is also is the author of the novel "Finding Caruso" and two memoirs: "In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country," winner of the PEN-Jerard Award and finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize, and "Hungry for the World." She is co-editor, with Mary Clearman Blew, of "Circle of Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Western Women Writers", and, with Claire Davis, of "Kiss Tomorrow Hello: Notes from the Midlife Underground by Twenty-Five Women Over Forty."

Her essays, stories, and poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including MORE Magazine, Fourth Genre, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. She teaches writing at the University of Idaho and lives with her husband, the poet Robert Wrigley, on Moscow Mountain.

Barnes will be in residence during the 2009 Port Townsend Writers Conference, leading a workshop in nonfiction. She will be giving a public reading on July 12, at 7:30 pm at the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater.

Carolyn Forché Making Two Appearances at Wheeler Theater

Poet Carolyn Forché will be making not one, but two separate appearances at the Wheeler Theater this Saturday, May 9. 

At 3:30 pm, she'll give a craft lecture on The Literature of "Witness." At 7:30 pm, she will give a reading. Both events are free to the public. 

Carolyn Forché is the author of four books of poetry. Her first collection, "Gathering The Tribes", won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award.

In 1977, she traveled to Spain to translate the work of exiled Salvadoran poet Claribel Alegría, and upon her return, received a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, which enabled her to travel to El Salvador, where she worked as a human rights advocate.

That work led to her second collection of poems, "The Country Between Us," which described what she personally had experienced in El Salvador during the Salvadoran Civil War. The work established her reputation as a poet who was unafraid to use her voice to bear witness to contemporary events. Published with the help of Margaret Atwood, the book catapulted her to international acclaim. 

Her translation of Alegria's work, "Flowers From The Volcano", appeared in 1983. That same year, her book "El Salvador: Work of Thirty Photographers" (for which she wrote the text) was published.