Writing at Centrum

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.

Old Friends Making New Appearances!

Two of Centrum's most popular workshop leaders over the past thirty-seven years will be stopping by over the next couple of months.

Poet Joe Stroud, one of the most renowned teachers that the Port Townsend Writers' Conference has ever had, will be giving a free reading at the Northwind Arts Gallery this Saturday, February 28, at 7 pm. Stroud will be reading with three former workshop students, all of whom are publishing poets in their own right.

Stroud has published five collections of poetry, most recently "Of This World; New and Selected Poems" (Copper Canyon Press, 2008) and "Country of Light" (Copper Canyon Press, 2004). He divides his time between his home in Santa Cruz on the California coast and a cabin in the Sierra Nevada. Varied in subject and form, Stroud’s poems include six-line lyrics, narrative prose poems, odes, homages, sustained contemplations, suites, and brief epigrammatic offerings.

Then, May 9, poet Carolyn Forché will give a free public reading at the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater at Fort Worden as part of a workshop that she will be leading here over the long weekend. Entitled "The Literature of Witness," this sold-out workshop is the last one that Carolyn will be giving anywhere until 2010. A waiting list has been started. The reading takes place at 7:30.  
 

Poet Gary Lilley to Read at Wheeler Theater

Poet Gary Lilley, who has been in-residence in the Port Townsend schools since January 16, will capstone his visit with a public reading at the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater on Saturday, January 31, at 7 pm.

Lilley, a Copper Canyon Press poet, 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.

The reading is free.

Bill Ransom Reading to Launch 2009 Literary Programming

In 1973, novelist and poet Bill Ransom had an idea.

What could happen if a entire place—in this case, Fort Worden State Park, which the Washington state legislature had just signed into being—were to become a haven and a community for writers?

At the time, nation-wide, there were very few conferences and programs focused on nurturing creative writers. What could happen, Ransom wondered, if some of the best writers currently working in the country all came to hang out with beginning and emerging writing students? 

Under the auspices of Centrum, Ransom and the Centrum staff began the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The Port Townsend Writers’ Conference comes off a 2008 season that featured more participants, faculty members, and audience members than ever before; and in 2009, the Centrum community is celebrating 37 years of literary programming with a full year of events. 

To launch the 2009 season, Bill Ransom will give a free poetry reading the evening of Saturday, January 17, in Room D of the Schoolhouse Building in Fort Worden State Park. The reading will begin at 7:30 pm.

Ransom will read from his newest collection of poetry, “The Woman and the War Baby,” a book built around themes, icons, and characters from the Pacific Northwest and Central America, where he volunteered for many years with humanitarian groups. 

Bill Ransom Reading

Poet and novelist Bill Ransom, the founder of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, will be reading from his new collection of poems, "The Woman and the War Baby" at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle. The reading happens Sunday, October 26, at 3 pm in the Cabaret Room.

Brown, Kaminsky to Read at Wheeler October 11

Two of the brightest lights in contemporary world literature will read at the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater on Saturday, October 11, at 7:30 pm. Presented by Centrum, the reading serves as the public capstone to the Autumn Writers’ Intensive, taught by Seattle-based writer Rebecca Brown and Ukrainian poet Ilya Kaminsky, who was forced to flee the Crimea in 1993, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of persecution against Jewish families. The doors open at 7 pm for this free reading.

Rebecca Brown is the author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction, including “The Last Time I Saw You”, “The Gifts of the Body”, and “Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary.” Rebecca is also well-known for her teaching, activism, and outreach efforts in the Puget Sound literary community. She was the first writer-in-residence at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle and the co-founder of the Jack Straw Writers’ Program, which introduces regional writers to the medium of recorded audio, encourages the creation of new literary work, and provides new venues for the writer and their work.

Brown, the Artistic Director for Literature at Centrum from 2005 to 2008, has taught in numerous settings, including Brown, U.C. Davis, the University of Washington, Pacific Lutheran University, prisons, senior citizens’ homes, libraries, and bars. Brown also collaborates frequently with artists in different disciplines, including the opera and theater. She has lived in London and Italy and now makes her home in Seattle with her spouse, their cats, and an impressive collection of CD’s.   

One of Brown’s most beloved novels may be “The Gifts of the Body,” a haunting novel about an AIDS caregive. The novel, published in 1994, won a 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”) that premiered at Centrum in 2005. Her work often appears in anthologies and has been translated into many languages.

Ilya Kaminsky’s book-length collection of poems, “Dancing In Odessa,” was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Ilya resided in San Francisco for many years, where he worked as a law clerk for the National Immigration Law Center and Bay Area Legal Aid, assisting immigrants, the homeless, and the impoverished in solving their legal difficulties. He currently teaches at San Diego State University.

Rarely in the United States today does a poet capture both widespread critical and popular acclaim. The handful of poets who have—Robert Pinsky, Mary Oliver, Elizabeth Bishop—are being joined by Ilya Victorovich Kaminsky, who is rapidly becoming one of the United States’s most vital  writers.

For Ilya, poetry in English arrived unexpectedly. A year after his family’s arrival in Rochester, New York, his father died suddenly, of a heart attack. Kaminsky found he could not write about the loss in Russian, because it was the language his father had given him.

“How could I make this man I loved into words?” he wondered. “That would be a betrayal.”

At the same time he felt that something had to be said. English became his refuge. “Somehow,” he says, “for whatever reason, John Donne crossed my path. ‘Death, thou shalt die,’ I think was the line. And suddenly I felt like something miraculous could happen. In this new language, we could live again.”