Please note. For the two-week 2012 Port Townsend Writers' Conference, each faculty member will be in-residence for slightly different dates. Please make sure to note the dates (in brackets) that each faculty member will be teaching at the Conference.
POETRY
Gary Copeland Lilley [July 8-15]
Gary Copeland Lilley is a North Carolina native who earned his MFA from the Warren Wilson College Program for Writers. His publications include four books of poetry, of which the most recent is "Alpha Zulu", from Ausable/Copper Canyon Press. He has taught poetry and creative writing in the scholar program of Young Chicago Authors, the Great Smokies Writing Program at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, and at Warren Wilson College. He has been a poet-in-residence at The Poetry Center of Chicago, and a visiting writer-lecturer at Colby College and at the Institute of American Indian Art.
Class Description:
“Your New Poems”
New poems. That’s right: a workshop and class that generates work, strong draft poems created and discussed by a roomful of writers. How do we sharpen our images, fine-tune the music in the language, and let the line show its well-defined muscle? Bring a draft poem or two with you to help get this started, but you will be expected to create a new draft poem every day. I might have a dynamo prompt up my sleeve, the skill of observation, of all our regions and terrains—current, past, and future—are really what informs our poetry. The goal of this class is to produce a set of draft poems to take home. Register. Kim Addonizio [July 15-22]
Kim Addonizio was born in Washington, D.C., in 1954. She received her B.A. and M.A. from San Francisco State University. Her books of poetry include "Lucifer at the Starlite," "Tell Me," "The Philosopher's Club," and many others. Addonizio is also the author of a collection of short stories, two novels, and, with Dorianne Laux, the co-author of "The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry."
Class Description: One of the most satisfying elements of poetry is the delight of being surprised, whether by a turn of thought or a turn of phrase. The unexpected wakes us up and brings us into the moment of the poem. Yet too often, the poems we write can feel predictable, simply describing events without getting to that level of mystery--and play--where poetry lives. “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader,” as Frost famously said. Appreciating and cultivating that wild aspect of writing is going to be our mission this week. Come prepared to write, and also bring three poems, with copies, you’d like to work on. Expect the unexpected! Register.
Ashley Capps [July 8-15 and July 15-22]
Ashley Capps was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. She received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2006. Her first book of poems, "Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields," was selected by Gerald Stern for the Akron Poetry Prize. Recent poems have appeared in Ploughshares, and the Boston Review among other magazines. She is at work on a second collection of poetry.
Class Description:
"Encyclopoetics: getting the world into our poems, with a focus on the art of paying attention"
One of the dead ends of poetry is the conception of the poem as mainly a kind of stylized space onto which the poet poignantly maps moments of pathos and gravitas prized from the narrative arsenal of personal drama and anecdote. No one wants to be stuck next to the person at the party who does nothing but talk about herself; the same, I would argue, holds true for poetry. After all, the world is worlding, and the closer we look, the stranger and richer it becomes. I would like for us to focus on closer looking in this workshop, and to think about ways of getting more of the world into our poems; not in order to reproduce what is already visible—but to make it visible. We live in such a way that many of our physical experiences occur mechanically, their sensory element lost; through habituation or misuse, our perceptions are dulled, and we drift through coffee and traffic and see without seeing, hear without hearing, touch without feeling. In our workshop, we will explore the capacity of poetry to restore the sensations of life to ourselves and to others; to revivify the process of perception; to promote mindfulness; to recuperate empathy and a sense of connectedness; and to recover wonder. In addition to revising and revitalizing three of your own poems, you will have the opportunity to begin several new pieces based on prompts we will undertake together. We’ll have several activities based on ways of looking, including a nature walk (plant i.d.!); in-class microscope viewing (the bee’s knees! Literally!); etymological excavation (looking behind, and into, words); and for these and other activities I would like you to keep a special notebook: a noticing book, for thoughts and observations related to looking. We will also explore poetic and non-poetic forms and devices for organizing observations and information in a poem, including encomium, syllabic stanzas, and anaphora; field guides, indexes, and encyclopedias; and we will attempt writing exercises in which we variously conceive of the poem as sunlight; the poem as walk; the poem as dictionary, etc. We will also consult, and potentially model, poems and texts by other writers, including Walt Whitman ("Song of Myself"), Christopher Smart ("Jubilate Agno"), Marianne Moore ("The Fish"), Elizabeth Bishop, the OED, Henry David Thoreau (journals), Mary Ruefle (poems from "Cold Pluto"), Gabriel Gudding ("To the Sun at Anchor"), Gerard Manley Hopkins (notebooks) and others. Register. Dana Levin [July 15-22]
Dana Levin’s collections of poetry include "In the Surgical Theatre," "Wedding Day," and "Sky Burial." Selecting Levin’s manuscript for the American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Prize, Louise Glück praised the work as “sensuous, compassionate, violent, extravagant.” Levin’s free-verse, image-driven poems grapple with the legacies of both Confessionalism and Language poetry by engaging and questioning the Self, while at the same time using line breaks, punctuation, and syntax as primarily sound-driven tools. Levin’s honors include awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lannan Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Whiting Foundation. She lives in Santa Fe and teaches at the University of New Mexico and Warren Wilson College.
Class Description:
"Master Class in Poetry"
Recently a chapbook came my way that I couldn’t shake from mind. With close reading, I realized that the word “not” appeared over sixty times and on nearly every page of the thirty page manuscript. Rather than being repetitive, the simple word “not” became the key to my vivid understanding, and admiration, of the poems before me. I offer this story to illustrate the anchor point of this master class: pattern recognition―one of the core engines that make poems and poets tick. It aids our reading, our revising, and can be a major help in putting together any manuscript, from five poems to fifty. Participants will submit, before the conference begins, six poems (no more than ten pages, total). We’ll workshop one or two in class (depending on class size) within the context of the total six: what patterns do we notice in each poem, in the poems as a whole? How can we use pattern recognition, and pattern making in general, to strengthen our compositional and revisionary skills? Participants will also, before the conference begins, complete a fun and easy generative writing exercise that we’ll discuss in our first session. The last two days of the class will be given over to individual conferences. Register.
Erin Belieu [July 8-15]
Erin Belieu, Centrum's Artistic Director for the Port Townsend Writers' Conference, is the author of three collections of poetry. Her first book, "Infanta," was a winner of the National Poetry Series, selected by Hayden Carruth. "Infanta" was also chosen as a best book of the year by The Washington Post and Library Journal. Her second collection, "One Above & One Below," was the winner of the Midland Authors Prize in poetry and the Ohioana prize, and her most recent collection, "Black Box," was a finalist in 2007 for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is currently Director of The Graduate Creative Writing Program at Florida State University. In addition to her writing, editing, and teacher, Erin Belieu is the co-founder and co-director of VIDA, a literary organization that seeks to explore critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women.
Class Description:
"Vision and Revision"
As most of the heavy lifting when making a poem happens in the revision process, we'll spend our time in this workshop discussing strategies and techniques for taking drafts to the next level. Why do some poems refuse to stand up straight? How do I construct a narrative to support the story my poem tells? Is my poem telling the best part of the story? How and why does a lyric work? What other formal choices that might suit the voice and imagery with which I'm working? There are constructive strategies one can learn to help answer these questions, ones that will keep you writing well beyond our workshop. My goal is to give you new tools for your tool box that will help you solve these conundrums when you're working on your own. This process may involve generating new poems during our time together at the conference as well as discussing the two poems you are encouraged to send in ahead.
CREATIVE NONFICTION
Cheryl Strayed [July 15-22]
Cheryl Strayed's debut novel “Torch” was a finalist for the Great Lakes Award and was selected by The Oregonian as one of the top ten books of the year by writers living in the Pacific Northwest. Her memoir "Wild" will be released in 2012. Strayed’s short stories and essays have been anthologized in The Best American Essays, Best New American Voices, and other anthologies, and have been published in such periodicals as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, The Sun, and The Missouri Review. She holds an MFA in fiction writing from Syracuse University and lives in Portland, Oregon.
Class Description:
"Two Things Happening At Once"
You know it happened. You know it meant something. You don’t know how to untangle those things and express them both concisely on the page. The best creative nonfiction writing almost always entails writing about two things happening at once—the summer you took piano lessons while realizing your marriage was over; the year you spent in Greece and came to embrace the wrinkles that line your face; the visit with an old friend that culminated in you finally forgiving your dad. The most meaningful creative nonfiction has a literal as well as an emotional plot. It tells us not only what happened, but also why what happened matters. In this workshop, designed for writers at all levels of experience, our focus will be on how to craft narratives that have more than one ball in the air. We’ll have discussions and do writing exercises aimed at helping you learn more about emotional complexity, narrative structure, the art of revelation, building metaphor from real life, creating tension, and going fearlessly deep into all the layers of your story, even if you’re terrified to do it. Please read the following essays before the conference and bring them with you to class: “The Fourth State of Matter,” by Jo Ann Beard; “Burl’s,” by Bernard Cooper; and “Consider the Lobster,” by David Foster Wallace. Each of these essays can be found online. They are also collected together in the "Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present." Register.
Diane Roberts [July 8-15]
Diane Roberts's latest book, "Dream State," about her politically prominent (and very odd) family has been called "perfect," as well as "hilarious," "wild," "fun," "strange,"and "splendid." Roberts's previous two books --"Faulkner and Southern Womanhood" and "The Myth of Aunt Jemima"--are explorations of Southern culture. She is also a journalist, writing op-ed pieces for The New York Times, The New Republic, and The Times of London. She is a political columnist for The St. Petersburg Times in Florida and makes documentaries for BBC Radio in London, where she also spends part of the year. She has been a commentator for NPR since 1993 and she writes for the Washington Post.
Class Description:
Nonfiction can seem like the red-headed stepchild of the writerly arts, not quite as Olympian as poetry, a little less sexy than fiction. But truth can set you free–free to illuminate the weirdness (or beauty or pain or humor or outrage or heroism or horror) of the everyday world. In this workshop, we will work on nonfiction techniques, including how to be a good observer, how to edit real life, and how to tell a story economically, effectively, and (we hope) elegantly. It would be good for you to arrive with a draft of a piece of nonfiction you’re working on, or an outline for something you want to do. Your project can be an essay or a book chapter or something even longer. I would also like for you to bring an example of somebody else’s nonfiction which resonates with you and teaches you something about how to write. It can be a piece in the New Yorker or a piece of New Journalism (not so new any more, of course) by Hunter S. Thompson or Tom Wolfe, Thoreau on Walden Pond or Dillard on Tinker Creek, Mencken on the South or M.F.K. Fisher on food. We’ll talk about it–and your stuff, too. Register. Judith Kitchen [July 8-15]
Judith Kitchen is the author of five books, including "Perennials" (poetry), "Only the Dance," "Distance and Direction," and " The House on Eccles Road." Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including recent essays in Prairie Schooner, the Colorado Review, and the Georgia Review. She has also edited three collections of short nonfiction pieces for W. W. Norton. Her awards include two Pushcart prizes in nonfiction and the Lillian Fairchild award. A former instructor at SUNY College at Brockport, she also served as editor and publisher of the State Street Press Chapbook Series. She currently serves on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop Low-Residency MFA at Pacific Lutheran University. Register.
Class Description:
"To Memoir or to Essay"
At some point in the writing process, a writer of autobiographical nonfiction comes to a fork in the road. Will this stuff of the life become memoir, or essay? The focus of this workshop will be to determine how your work is best served by thinking along these lines. Each day will open with a short discussion of one aspect of craft—or style, or perspective. Then we will look at the work submitted by workshop members, building a group “vocabulary” for talking about issues of craft. At the end of each session, I’ll suggest an “exercise” designed to extend the discussion—something you can do later in the day if you have time, or can take home with you for later thought. By the end of the week, you should have ideas for how you might design a longer project. Submit: Up to 12 pages of nonfiction, double-spaced, by June 1, 2012. Send them electronically to Jordan. Be sure to put your name and email address at the top of the first page. I’ll put them in an order so we can develop and deepen our discussion and return them to you electronically so you can prepare for the workshop.
FICTION
Benjamin Alire Sáenz [July 8-15]
Benjamin Alire Sáenz is the author of such novels as "Carry Me Like Water," "Dark and Perfect Angels," "The House of Forgetting," "In Perfect Light," and "Names on a Map", as well as "Elegies in Blue," "Dreaming the End of War" and "The Book of What Remains." He has taught at the University of Texas at El Paso for the past twenty years and lives, writes, loves, hates, and breathes on the U.S./Mexico border.
Class Description:
"A Vast Universe: The Art of Writing the Short Story." 1. You must somehow communicate the complexity of your characters without driving the reader away with explanations. This isn’t a cocktail party—don’t waste time on introductions. A reader must know the characters and know them immediately. There is no time to waste. 2. Get to the heart of the matter without unnecessary delay. Something has to happen and it has to happen soon. There is no time to waste. 3. The characters must speak with real voices. They should talk like people, not like ideas. No story can work without mastering the art of dialogue 4. Write well and carefully but don’t fall in love with your own writing. Beautiful, lyrical sentences are at the service of a greater good. Fall in love, instead, with the story you’re telling and the characters that are living the story. 5. Ask yourself this: Why does this story matter? Why does it need to be told? 6. There is more than one way to tell a story. Structure and plot matter. Choose well. 7. Endings to stories are not inevitable. They just have to feel inevitable. 8. A short story should have all of the ambitions and pleasures of a novel. 9. When I am reading a great short story, I am happy to be lost in the vast universe of the writer. Be ready to produce a short story during the course of this workshop. I will send out reading assignments to all participants at the beginning of the summer. In addition, each participant should send out via e-mail the first five pages of a story at least two weeks before the workshop. We will discuss those pages on the first day of the workshop.
Sam Ligon [July 12-15]
Sam Ligon is the author of the short-story collection “Drift and Swerve” and the novel “Safe in Heaven Dead.” His stories have appeared in such journals as Alaska Quarterly Review, StoryQuarterly, and New England Review. He teaches at Eastern Washington University’s Inland Northwest Center for Writers, and is the editor of Willow Springs.
Class Description:
"Flash-fiction Boot Camp: Three Days, Three Stories."
In the anthology Sudden Fiction, Robert Kelly refers to short-short fiction as “the insidious, sudden, alarming, stabbing, tantalizing, annihilating form… neither poetic prose nor prosy verse, but the energy and clarity typical of prose coincident in the scope and rhythm of the poem.” In the same anthology, Joyce Carol Oates writes that “[v]ery short fictions are nearly always experimental, exquisitely calibrated, reminiscent of Frost’s definition of a poem—a structure of words that consumes itself as it unfolds, like ice melting on a stove.” Very short fictions tend to rely on surprise, a hard turn at the end. They’re often elliptical or fragmented, and often shaped by tone and shadow. In this workshop, we’ll be exploring compression and limitation, evocation and implication, formal constraint and what might arise from line pressure and narrative restriction. We’ll immerse ourselves in a fever of flash fiction reading and writing, composing and workshopping three short-short stories in three days, an intensive in the annihilating form. Register. Pam Houston [July 15-22]
Pam Houston is the author of two collections of linked short stories, "Cowboys Are My Weakness," which was the winner of the 1993 Western States Book Award and has been translated into nine languages, and "Waltzing the Cat." Her stories have been selected for the 1999 volumes of Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Awards. She is a regular contributor to O, the Oprah Magazine. Her novel "Sight Hound" was released in January, 2005.
Class Description:
It was great when it happened, gorgeous when it lived in your imagination, transcendent as you hit the "on" button of your computer and got to work. Now that it is on the page it is seeming both flat and unapproachable. In this workshop we will look at drafts of stories and novel chapters that aren't quite making it, and see if we can figure out how to make them not just good but great. We’ll address structure (making sure that form is following function or vice versa), narrative tension, voice, point of view, dialogue, and beginnings and endings. We will talk about how to find the real pain spot of a story and we will force ourselves to slow down where it hurts. We will make sure that our glimmers, those hunks of the physical world that sent us into the story in the first place, have been remade in all of their complexity in language. We will talk about the difficult moments when writing feels like juggling an apple, a chainsaw, and a toaster, and celebrate the rare but intoxicating moments when the place we were most afraid to go did not kill us after all. We will do some brief, nightly exercises, and I would like you to read Mary Gaitskill's "Don't Cry" and Tim Winton's "The Turning," before you come to the conference. Register.
Jennine Capó Crucet [July 8-15]
Jennine Capó Crucet is a Miami-born Cuban writer. Her debut story collection, "How to Leave Hialeah," won the 2009 Iowa Short Fiction Prize, the 2010 John Gardner Book Award, the 2010 Devil's Kitchen Reading Award, and was named a Best Book of the Year by the Miami Herald, the Miami New Times, and the Latinidad List. Jennine is the recipient of the John Winthrop Prize & Residency for Emerging Writers, scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and her work has been a finalist for both the Chicano/Latino Literary Prize and the Missouri Review Editor’s Prize. Her stories have appeared in multiple literary journals.
Class Description:
Sometimes, all that stands in the way of us working on our book projects is a little accountability. In this workshop, we'll form a supportive and enthusiastic space where we'll generate tons of new material and break through the dreaded writer's block. On day one, we'll each set a personal goal for the number of new pages we want to write each day--one, five, ten, whatever you feel you can really do. From then on, we'll hold each other accountable to that goal, bringing new material--no matter what shape it's in--into the workshop. We'll read our fellow writers' pages and ask questions of the work and the characters, and we'll use these questions to generate the next day's material. You get to hear right away what from your piece is sparking the reader's interest, what's confusing them, and best of all, you'll feel real pressure to keep going. Everyone involved understands that this is new, first-draft material, so there's no pressure to be perfect: this is about rekindling your love and excitement for your novel--about getting your ideas out quickly, even if it's messy. We'll also talk about ways to keep the momentum going and do in-class exercises that teach us how to stay disciplined once we're back at our desks. Ideal for writers who are stalled on a novel project or who have an idea for a novel or novella and just haven't gotten down to the tough stuff yet, this workshop provides a concentrated amount of time and support to add significant length to a manuscript in progress. Not for the faint of heart, but definitely for those looking to get their book (or potential book) into swimsuit-weather shape. Come with a project in progress or in mind; spandex optional. Register. Dorothy Allison [July 15-22]
Dorothy Allison grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, the first child of a fifteen-year-old unwed mother who worked as a waitress. Now living in Northern California with her partner Alix and her teenage son, she describes herself as a feminist, a working class story teller, a Southern expatriate, a sometime poet and a happily born-again Californian. Allison's chapbook of poetry, "The Women Who Hate Me," was published with Long Haul Press in 1983. Her short story collection, "Trash" came out in 1988. "Bastard Out of Carolina," became a finalist for the 1992 National Book Award, and "Cavedweller" is a national bestseller. Awarded the 2007 Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction, Allison is a member of the board of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Class Description:
"Getting to the Good Stuff"
A generative workshop designed to begin new work or restart writing that has gone cold. We will begin with a brief selection of a manuscript on which you wish to start or start anew. You will be asked to work from questions or suggestions provided by the instructor--and exchange drafts with other workshop members. The workshop will then focus on work on the page, with detailed attention to critiquing drafts and bringing characters and language to a new level of engagement. Reference for the workshop will be Ursula LeGuin's "Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew"--an invaluable resource for literary terms and explications of voice, point of view and place. Register.
Susan Steinberg [July 15-22]
Susan Steinberg is the 2010 United States Artists Ziporyn Fellow in Literature. She is the author of the short story collections, "Hydroplane" and "The End of Free Love." Her third collection is forthcoming from Graywolf. Her stories have appeared in McSweeney's, The Better of McSweeney's Volume Two, Conjunctions, The Gettysburg Review, American Short Fiction, Boulevard, The Massachusetts Review, Quarterly West, Denver Quarterly, Columbia, and other literary journals and magazines. Steinberg is the recipient of a 2011 Pushcart Prize. She has held residencies at The MacDowell Colony, The Vermont Studio Center, The Wurlitzer Foundation, the Blue Mountain Center, Yaddo, and NYU. She received a BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in English from The University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is currently Associate Professor of English at the University of San Francisco.
Class Description:
"Form and Short Fiction"
Now that boundary-pushing fiction writers have paved the way for us to try out alternative forms, why adhere to the traditional narrative arc? It’s perfect for some stories, but not all stories can conform to that shape; not all should. Some stories are nonlinear, some are fragmented, some are voice-driven. Some stories borrow from poetry, some from nonfiction. In this workshop, we will discover the best directions for your short fiction. In other words, we will consider what your stories are demanding and what choices you can make, keeping an eye on the inextricable relationship of form and content and the multitude of formal options available to us. In addition to looking at short works by a range of contemporary writers who successfully, and often subtly, undo the expectations of conventional fiction (including Lydia Davis, David Foster Wallace, Denis Johnson, Amy Hempel), we will write short prose pieces every day, trying on new strategies. And if more traditional strategies are what’s best for your work, that’s fine too. You should expect to leave this course with several solid drafts of either new or old work. This is a good workshop for short stories, flash fiction, and stand-alone novel excerpts.
CROSS-GENRE
Peggy Shumaker [July 15-22]
Peggy Shumaker is the Alaska State Writer Laureate. Her most recent book of poems is "Gnawed Bones." Her lyrical memoir is "Just Breathe Normally," and she is on a book of poems set in Costa Rica, "Genesis, Quetzal." Peggy is founding editor of Boreal Books, an imprint that publishes books of fine art and literature from Alaska. She's also editor of the Alaska Literary Series at University of Alaska Press. Professor emerita from University of Alaska Fairbanks, she teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program.
Class Description:
"Personal Stakes and Wider Concerns: Upping the Emotional Ante"
In this open-genre workshop, we'll focus on generating new material. We'll write every day. We'll challenge ourselves to craft pieces that have emotional depth for the writer and for readers. We'll look at examples in poetry and prose. Participants may write in any genre--poetry, fiction, nonfiction, or some combination. Experience with writing is valuable but not required. Everyone is welcome. We'll read as writers, noticing tools and techniques we can adapt for our own work. We'll look at pieces that blur the boundaries between genres--lyrical nonfiction, for instance, or narrative poems. We'll generate new assignments for ourselves, ones that will allow us to use our strengths and to stretch and grow. Writers will leave the workshop with fresh options for their work--both the pieces under discussion and writing not yet on the page. Register.
YOUTH WRITING WORKSHOP
Chris Crutcher [July 8-15]
Chris Crutcher is the author of thirteen books--ten novels, two short story collections and an autobiography. Prior to his work as an author, he taught school in Washington and California and acted as director of an Oakland alternative school for nearly a decade. That academic history, coupled with 25 years as a child and family therapist specializing in abuse and neglect, has infused his literary work with realism and emotional heft. His signature blend of tragedy and comedy have made him a favorite with teen and adult readers. He is also one of the most frequently banned authors in North America--a fact he considers an accomplishment, rather than a drawback. Crutcher has been awarded the NCTE's National Intellectual Freedom Award, the ALAN Award, the ALA's Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, the CLA's St. Katharine Drexel Award and Writer magazine's Writers Who Make a Difference Award. Chris Crutcher makes his home in Spokane, Washington.
Class Description:
Chris Crutcher will walk you through the writing process that helped him complete and publish ten novels, two short story collections and an autobiography, along with dozens of magazine columns and other publications in this nuts and bolts approach to crafting fiction and nonfiction heavily influenced by realism and each writer's sense of personal truth. Characterization, setting, plotting, pacing, and balance between humor and tragedy, as well as revision and dogged determination will be covered. Questions and class participation will be encouraged. Learn more, and apply!
