We've just updated our afternoon-workshop page, but I'm also crossposting the (drumroll, please) freshly completed, brand-new, up-to-date afternoon workshop schedule here. The afternoon workshop offerings are contextualized below with the rest of the daily Conference schedule.

These workshops are free for those participants registered for a core morning workshop. For those not registered for a core morning workshop, afternoon workshops are available individually or for all six days. You can register for the afternoon sessions online, by calling us at 360.385.3102 x131 or x114. Please note that there will be multiple workshops happening at the same time, so you need to choose which one to go to!  

THE 2010 PORT TOWNSEND WRITERS’ CONFERENCE

All faculty readings and lectures take place in the Joseph F. Wheeler Theater; all meals take place in the Fort Worden Commons.

Sunday, July 18
3:30-5:30—Check-in outside the Centrum office building; welcome gathering.
5:30—Dinner
7—Welcome at the Wheeler Theater
7:30—Readings by Martín Espada; Ana Menéndez
9:15—Welcome gathering in the Schoolhouse Building, Room H.

Monday, July 19
7-8—Morning Freewrite Room D
8-9—Breakfast
9-11:30—Morning workshop
• Room F Chris Abani
• Room M Ana Menéndez
• Room K Dana Levin
• Room D Martín Espada
• Room L Denise Chávez
• Room J Bich Minh Nguyen 
• Room O Erin Belieu 
• Room N Peter Orner
9-10:30—Morning Exercises
• Room H Ellie Mathews
12-1:00—Lunch
2-3:30—Workshops and lectures in special topics
• Susan Landgraf Room J
“What fills ‘The Red Wheelbarrow’?”
William Carlos Williams said: Nothing but in things. And James Dickey wrote that in writing poetry, “Connections between things…exist…in ways that they never did before.” What are these things? What are the things, which, put together in a poem, make a whole world? We’ll look at Williams’s wheelbarrow poem–what it’s made of, how it’s made, and how it moves; then there will be several exercises that lead to generating a poem of your own.
• Sam Ligon Room N
“Negative Space in Fiction”
While we’ve all heard the writing advice to “show, don’t tell,” just as important to fiction is what we don’t show or tell—what we reveal through absence or omission. Musicians and composers use silence in song to create tension and meaning and contrast against sound. Painters use negative space around a subject to create contrast and to heighten color and composition in the subject itself. In fiction, what’s not revealed, and how it’s not revealed, often creates a tremendous gravity of absence, or a kind of shadow effect, that informs character and meaning in story. In “Death in the Afternoon”, Ernest Hemingway wrote that “If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” We’ll discuss Hemingway’s “iceberg principal,” or what Amy Hempel refers to as “negative space,” using two stories as examples of creating shape, meaning, and gravity through absence or omission—Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” and Hempel’s “Today Will Be a Quiet Day.”
• Susan Rich Room M
“Documenting the Lyric”
What is a chapbook? What is a narrative arc? Where can I find one? This workshop will examine the nature of book-length poetry projects and examine texts from Bang, McCombs, Tretheway, and Whitcomb. Then, we will try out different scaffoldings to order our own storm of obsessions. Playing with new exercises, you will extend your thinking of what makes a book of poems. This workshop is for those who are mid-project and for those who are merely curious about an extended lyrical format.
• Wendy Call Room D
“Ten Ways to Improve Your Nonfiction Prose”
This is a two-part workshop spanning the Monday and Tuesday afternoon workshop slots, although one does not need to attend each session. For this first session, we will discuss ten suggestions for strengthening the literary and narrative quality of your nonfiction prose. With examples from some of our best-loved (mostly nonfiction) word-workers—James Agee, Sandra Cisneros, Elizabeth Gilbert, George Orwell, and others—we will delve into different aspects of craft: from dialogue and description to sound and synesthesia. Many short writing exercises will get you thinking outside your normal writing boxes.
• Michael Schein Room K
“Baseball, Bicycling & Poetic Passion”
The love poem is so well known in the context of the Beloved that we sometimes forget our passion also extends to our pastimes—sports, hobbies, games. This session examines a different sort of love poem, in which the beloved is what we do for fun—baseball, bicycling, hiking, juggling, skiing, paragliding and more. Often, these “mere” pastimes are the moments in which we are most alive, and we borrow their rhythms to weave the arc of our own narrative. We’ll study examples of these special love poems, explore their rhythms, joys, triumphs, disappointments, insights. What are you passionate about doing? Is it more than just a game? Be ready to write it.
• Bill Ransom Room O
“A Writer’s Tool Box”
Bring poetry, fiction, or nonfiction prose manuscripts, a writing implement and a willingness to mark up your work. We will identify weak and strong elements of language and will apply what we’ve discussed to your writing.  Strengthen your writing with this workshop, no matter which genre you bring or how much experience you’ve had; the art, however, is all up to you.
4-5—Craft lecture by Chris Abani
5:30—Dinner
7:30—Readings by Dana Levin, Peter Orner
10:00—The Ten O’Clock Open-Mike Readings (Room H of the Schoolhouse Building)

Tuesday, July 20
7-8—Morning Freewrite Room D
8-9—Breakfast
9-11:30—Morning workshop
• Room F Chris Abani
• Room M Ana Menéndez
• Room K Dana Levin
• Room D Martín Espada
• Room L Denise Chávez
• Room J Bich Minh Nguyen 
• Room O Erin Belieu 
• Room N Peter Orner
9-10:30—Morning Exercises
• Room H Ellie Mathews
12-1:00—Lunch
2-3:30—Workshops and lectures in special topics
• Lana Ayers Room M
 “Mouth to Mouth: Breathing Life into Persona Poems” 
The art of the persona poem requires the writer to become an authentic mouthpiece for the character s/he is giving voice to in the poem. Persona poems allow the writer to explore taboo or touchy subjects, express controversial opinions, or say things with the newfound authority granted only to a particular character. For persona poems to be successful, the writer must present a convincing character. But don’t confuse authenticity with expectation. Persona poems shock, surprise, and enchant the reader with the unanticipated insight. Persona poems allow the writer to explore the realms of the unknown, the impossible, the fantastic, and to just plain misbehave. In this workshop will look at some of the work of notable poets who have written persona poems, with an eye toward creating our own. 
• Sheila Bender Room J
“Writing Grief”
The art of writing serves us well when we are mourning. Narration about the moment we learned or really took in that we were losing someone dear to us can lead to retrieval of that person and their importance in our lives, to tears and to joy, to a folding of that person into ourselves. In this workshop, we’ll look at ways into this kind writing and ways to sustain your work, whether in prose or poetry, once you have begun.
• Sam Ligon—Room N
“The Short-Short Story”
In “In Search of Lost Time,” 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.”
• Maya Jewell Zeller Room M
“Object, Image, and Fascination with the Thing: The Making of Poetry from Raw
Material to Revision”
In this workshop, we will examine poems that rely on the repetition and morphing of lyric image to create a narrative. From Wallace Stevens’ meditative “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” to Nancy Pagh’s humorous “Ten Reasons Your Prayer Diet Won’t Work,” poets spin out complex associations from seemingly simple concepts. We’ll do some fun exercises which begin by helping you create raw material and end in the culmination of a poem draft. Each participant should leave with something new to work with, and some suggestions for how to shape it.
• Wendy Call Room D
“Ten Ways to Improve Your Nonfiction Prose”
This is a two-part workshop spanning the Monday and Tuesday afternoon workshop slots, and is appropriate both for those who attended the first session and those who did not. For this Tuesday session, we will discuss ten new suggestions for strengthening the literary and narrative quality of your nonfiction prose. With examples from some of our best-loved (mostly nonfiction) word-workers—James Agee, Sandra Cisneros, Elizabeth Gilbert, George Orwell, and others—we will delve into different aspects of craft: from dialogue and description to sound and synesthesia. Many short writing exercises will get you thinking outside your normal writing boxes.
• Bill Ransom Room O
“A Writer’s Tool Box”
Bring poetry, fiction or nonfiction prose manuscripts, a writing implement and a willingness to mark up your work. We will identify weak and strong elements of language and will apply what we've discussed to your writing.  Strengthen your writing with this workshop, no matter which genre you bring or how much experience you've had; the art, however, is all up to you.
• Daniel Zolinsky Room K
“The Twin Sisters: Literature and Photography”
The workshop will have as its basic premise that there is a relationship
between photography and literature. We will explore the parallels of storytelling and the common thread that they share, which is fundamentally a way of seeing, or the difference between just looking and really seeing. We will work in the field and explore the site to find its essence to articulate a sense of place, and also to discover the abstract in nature, and examine the compelling reality just beneath the surface of ordinary experience. No photography experience is necessary. Bring a camera, film or digital. Digital will  facilitate reviewing results at he end of the workshop. Bring a notebook as you may wish to write a text to accompany your photographs.
4-5—Craft lecture by Denise Chávez
5:30-6:30—Dinner
7:30—Reading by Cristina García
10:00—The Ten O’Clock Open-Mike Readings (Room H of the Schoolhouse Building)

Wednesday, July 21
7-8—Morning Freewrite Room D
8-9—Breakfast
9-11:30—Morning workshop
• Room F Chris Abani
• Room M Ana Menéndez
• Room K Dana Levin
• Room D Martín Espada
• Room L Denise Chávez
• Room J Bich Minh Nguyen 
• Room O Erin Belieu 
• Room N Peter Orner
9-10:30—Morning Exercises
• Room H Ellie Mathews
12-1:00—Lunch
2-3:30—Workshops in special topics
• Panel Discussion Room D
“How to Run a Literary Journal”
Featuring the editors of the Crab Creek Review (Kelli Russell Agodon, Lana Hechtman Ayers, Jen Betterley, and Annette Spaulding); The Meadow (Lindsay Wilson); and Willow Springs (Sam Ligon); this discussion will center, from an editor’s perspective, on how to successfully curate the most vital and essential sector of the world’s literary venues: the literary journal.
• Susan Landgraf, Room J
“What Your Body Has To Do With Writing”
We know our own bodies intimately. Some of us accept them; others wish for better, thinner, healthier, more muscled…. The fact is: There are poems waiting to come out of your body and its experiences. We’ll look at ways our bodies can tell stories—and truths—in poetry and prose by going to the sources themselves. Sometimes these stories, whether in prose or poetry, are snappy, saucy, and downright funny.  Plan to have fun with this.
• Sayantani Dasgupta Room F
“Writing with Cultural Sensitivity”
The “ideal” reader is no longer restricted to one particular geographical area or cultural sensitivity. Therefore, it becomes even more important to be able to maintain the thin line between what is culturally provocative and what is downright insensitive. Cultural sensitivity may be defined as the ability to adjust one’s perception and behaviors, and then practice styles to effectively meet the needs of different racial or ethnic groups. The first step in this direction lies in acknowledging the fact that cultural differences exist. In this session, by looking at short excerpts from the writings of Rudyard Kipling, Jhumpa Lahiri, Maxine Hong Kingston, Lan Samantha Chang, and Salman Rushdie, we will discuss how to incorporate adequate research and the oddities of culture in our writing in order to avoid generalizations, be those of land, language, food, religion, or gender.
• Jeremy Voigt Room L
“Formal and Informal Poetic Structures” 
Keats said that the person of the poet is nothing because they continually work to shape and fill another form. How do we shape personal experience into something beautiful and meaningful? This workshop will explore formal and informal structures that shape a poem and how those shapes influence the experience and meaning of a poem. Writing exercises and a look at examples ranging from Hopkins’s sonnets to Henri Cole’s approximate sonnets to the organic lines of Rebecca Seiferle.
• Sheila Bender Room O
“Writing Grief”
The art of writing serves us well when we are mourning. Narration about the moment we learned or really took in that we were losing someone dear to us can lead to retrieval of that person and their importance in our lives, to tears and to joy, to a folding of that person into ourselves. In this workshop, we’ll look at ways into this kind writing and ways to sustain your work, whether in prose or poetry, once you have begun.
• Daniel Zolinsky Room K
“The Twin Sisters: Literature and Photography”
The workshop will have as its basic premise that there is a relationship
between photography and literature. We will explore the parallels of storytelling and the common thread that they share, which is fundamentally a way of seeing, or the difference between just looking and really seeing. We will work in the field and explore the site to find its essence to articulate a sense of place, and also to discover the abstract in nature, and examine the compelling reality just beneath the surface of ordinary experience. No photography experience is necessary. Bring a camera, film or digital. Digital will  facilitate reviewing results at he end of the workshop. Bring a notebook as you may wish to write a text to accompany your photographs. (Please note that this session requires that the participant also attend the first Tuesday session.)
4-5—Craft lecture by Martín Espada
5:30-6:30—Dinner
7:30—Readings by Conference Participants
10:00—The Ten O’Clock Open-Mike Readings (Room H of the Schoolhouse Building)

Thursday, July 22
7-8—Morning Freewrite Room D
8-9—Breakfast
9-11:30—Morning workshop
• Room F Chris Abani
• Room M Ana Menéndez
• Room K Dana Levin
• Room D Martín Espada
• Room L Denise Chávez
• Room J Bich Minh Nguyen 
• Room O Erin Belieu 
• Room N Peter Orner
9-10:30—Morning Exercises
• Room H Ellie Mathews
12-1:00—Lunch
2-3:30—Workshops and lectures in special topics
• Lana Ayers Room M
 “Mouth to Mouth: Breathing Life into Persona Poems” 
The art of the persona poem requires the writer to become an authentic mouthpiece for the character s/he is giving voice to in the poem. Persona poems allow the writer to explore taboo or touchy subjects, express controversial opinions, or say things with the newfound authority granted only to a particular character. For persona poems to be successful, the writer must present a convincing character. But don’t confuse authenticity with expectation. Persona poems shock, surprise, and enchant the reader with the unanticipated insight. Persona poems allow the writer to explore the realms of the unknown, the impossible, the fantastic, and to just plain misbehave. In this workshop will look at some of the work of notable poets who have written persona poems, with an eye toward creating our own. 
• Tamara Sellman, Room L
“Blogging for Writers: How to Avoid Going Dark”
Writers benefit from starting and keeping a blogging practice. However, the demands of posting fresh content on a regular basis can compete for attention with one's own writing life. Writers, fortunately, don't have to choose between writing and blogging. This offline workshop offers lists of perennial content writers can turn to when their blogging well runs dry, as well as “geek” tricks and time-management “cheats” so writers can make the most of the blogging platform.
• Kitty Hoffman Room O
“Trying to Go Home Again: Excavation of Time and Place in the Writing of Richard Rodriguez, Annie Dillard, and others”
What is “home” in a time of social dislocation, immigration, exile, refugees? Is home a place, culture, community, the natural world? Thomas Wolfe wrote that you can’t go home again, but homelessness and the creation of home is a key theme in our time. Some writers of literary nonfiction explore the past to uncover and create meaning and a sense of “home” in the present. Others range across the realms of human knowledge and experience, juxtaposing seemingly unrelated notions and facts. Rodriguez and Dillard use similar writing techniques to explore and possibly create a sense of belonging in the world, a notion of home. Through an encounter with their strategies, we will explore the use of time and place as tools for the creation of new meaning.
• Stan Sanvel Rubin Room F
“Intimacy in the Lyric Poem”
“Intimate guardians of those crucial human nothings: to resist or brood or lament, to declare love or take it back.” —Marianne Boruch
The trajectory of lyric poetry has run from the Greek poet singing to an audience
of known fellow citizens to the internalized voice of the poet speaking over distance to an unknown, unseen audience, whether through print or podcast.
We will explore how the lyric poem achieves intimacy, who speaks it, who it speaks to—and maybe why. We’ll discuss examples intended to push your understanding of your own voice and generate ideas for your work.
• Sam Ligon Room N
“An Examination of ‘The Dead’”
“The Dead,” by James Joyce is one of a very few stories that fiction writers almost universally refer to as required reading for the story writer, one of those stories you need to read and reread, visit and revisit. It’s long and fluid and stunning in its conclusion, its power arising from the seemingly mundane events of an unremarkable gathering, “the Misses Morkan’s annual dance.” In this class we’ll be discussing “The Dead,” especially regarding point of view, momentum of narrative drive, and how its events and explorations of character arise from the action of what at first appears to be a “typical” night. You will need to have read “The Dead” before this class session—all fifteen-thousand-plus words—and be prepared for discussion. 
• Judith Skillman, Room D
“Writing About Why We Write: Ars Poetica”
In this hands-on workshop, we will discuss our need to create—to be the little god who makes order out of chaos. “Ars Poetica” refers to “the art of poetry”. As such, it provides a simple method by which one may fathom an individual poet’s philosophy of poetry, his or her motivation, background, and poetic vision. This workshop will focus on discovering one’s own motivation to write, using dialogue and free-writes.
• Deborah Poe, Room L
“The Sensual Infrastructure: Between the Abstract and Concrete”
As prose and poetry writers, we will reflect on how one can improve writing by way of deftly balancing abstract and concrete language. By weaving abstract and concrete language through spatial description and sensory details, readers are able to connect to stories and poems more deeply. We’ll consider how bridging the abstract and tangible does not merely provide a descriptive function. Such bridging engages readers more directly intellectually, psychologically and emotionally with the importance of your work.
4-5—Craft lecture by Ana Menéndez
5:30-6:30—Dinner
7:30—Readings by Bich Minh Nguyen; Denise Chávez
10:00—The Ten O’Clock Open-Mike Readings (Room H of the Schoolhouse Building)

Friday, July 23
7-8—Morning Freewrite Room D
8-9—Breakfast
9-11:30—Morning workshop
• Room F Chris Abani
• Room M Ana Menéndez
• Room K Dana Levin
• Room D Martín Espada
• Room L Denise Chávez
• Room J Bich Minh Nguyen 
• Room O Erin Belieu 
• Room N Peter Orner
9-10:30—Morning Exercises
• Room H Ellie Mathews
12-1:00—Lunch
12-1:00—Noon Readings outside the Fort Worden Commons by Gary Lilley and Judith Skillman.
2-3:30—Workshops in special topics
• Tamara Sellman, Room J
“Literary Alchemy 101: Turning Lead Into Gold (And Back Again)”
In this magical-realism workshop, we’ll take a set of mundane story circumstances (“lead”) and turn them into a magical narrative (“gold”). Then, we’ll take a second set of magical story circumstances (“gold”) and turn them into a mundane narrative (“lead”). By moving between these extremes, we’ll study the hidden, yet grounded magical-realist landscape from two vantage points. We will also examine work by Paola Corso, Barry Yourgrau, Aimee Bender, and others.
• Susan Landgraf, Room K
“We Are What We Eat”
Whether we live to eat or eat to live, eating (and shopping for food, peeling, shucking, scraping, mixing, kneading, cleaning up) takes up years of our lives.   There are travelers who swear that the food on their travels was their most memorable—and certainly most unique—experience. This workshop will metamorphose into a kitchen while we look at poems about food and prepare a new “recipe” of our own.
• Stan Sanvel Rubin Room F
“The MFA: Options and Obstacles”
An overview of possibilities and a practical discussion for anyone who is considering the MFA degree.
• Gary Lemons Room M
“The Autobiography of Everything—in Translation”
The underlying premise of this workshop is that
poetry is always autobiographical but coded in such a manner
that its personal relevance is difficult to share. That our words
are the synthesis of individual and cultural experience. And
that our words become our voice through a translative process
that initiates the decoding of the personal into the collective. 
The workshop will use meditation, breathing and movement
to listen directly to the cellular wisdom where the translator is
hard at work guiding memories and dreams to the empty page. 
• Lindsay Wilson Room N
“Always in Place: Why Place and Story Matters More in the Internet-Suburban Age”
Storytelling within a place in the realist, concrete tradition is a cross-cultural, universal, evolved adaptation according to philosopher Denis Dutton beginning in caves during the Paleolithic. The art of storytelling within a landscape is instinctual and learned through tribes and families. Language begins as survival: water, tiger, berry, cave, club; therefore, storytelling began as lessons in how to survive a place. How does this starting point help us in an American culture that almost insists it remains in the present tense, a culture of superficial, non-historical suburbs, strip malls, and Internet cafes? Is careful attention to place and story old fashioned and/or necessary? How do we as writers make new works with this in mind without resorting to the tired escapism of the pastoral, nature writer? I do not want to lose my cell phone, laptop or Wi-Fi. Discussion will revolve around essays by John Haines, Larry Levis, Denis Dutton and poems by Mary Karr, August Kleinzahler as well as others.
• Sam Ligon Room D
“Short Fiction and the Inverted Time Telescope”
In an interview with Willow Springs in 2007, Stuart Dybek said that “fiction is a temporal art. Its main subject is time. Its great power is chronology because chronology has an inescapable way of translating into cause and effect. It’s deceptive and illusory, but that’s the power of linear narrative….But linear narration is only one way to perceive reality.” And inverting or subverting linear narration might be another way to perceive reality. Writers such as Alice Munro, Dybek, Tobias Wolff, and many others often play with chronology and time in their fiction, sometimes finding and revealing the heart of a story in a moment brought to life in the protagonist’s past, ending with that past moment even, unhinging the story from forward-moving chronological narration. In this class we’ll read and discuss two stories that establish a present from which the action springboards into the past, never to return to the present, Dybek’s “Pet Milk,” and Wolff’s “Bullet in the Brain.” We’ll be considering this fundamental question: If the story’s essential revelation is in the past, why is a present introduced from which to travel backward?
• Bich Minh Nguyen Room H
“(Pop) Culture, Metaphor, and Nonfiction”  
That song that stays in your mind. That book you’ve read over and over. That television show you loved as a kid. That movie you’ve practically memorized by now. That store, that icon, that restaurant…So much (pop) culture swirls around us, marking us and becoming a part of our experiences and memories. This workshop will address ways to make good use of it all by turning our favorite (pop) culture moments into vibrant metaphors and creative nonfiction.
4-5—Craft lecture by Dana Levin
5:30-6:30—Dinner
7:30—Readings by contributors to The Crab Creek Review and Willow Springs, with introductions by the editors. 
10:00—The Ten O’Clock Open-Mike Readings (Room H of the Schoolhouse Building)

Saturday, July 24
7-8—Morning Freewrite Room D
8-9—Breakfast
9-11:30—Morning workshop
• Room F Chris Abani
• Room M Ana Menéndez
• Room K Dana Levin
• Room D Martín Espada
• Room L Denise Chávez
• Room J Bich Minh Nguyen 
• Room O Erin Belieu 
• Room N Peter Orner
9-10:30—Morning Exercises
• Room H Ellie Mathews
12-1:00—Lunch
2-3:30—Workshops and lectures in special topics
• Susan Rich Room O
“Speaking Pictures: A Poetry Workshop”
“Look at the subject, think about it before photographing, look until it becomes
alive and looks back into you.” —Edward Steichen
Here’s to focusing on ekphrasis: poems written about visual art. We will examine some famous models of the form by W.H. Auden, Rilke, and Lisel Mueller; read recent examples by contemporary poets and sharpen our powers of observation and description through fun and creative writing exercises. Finally we will try our hand at writing poems on actual works of art. All levels of writers are welcome — from absolute beginners to advanced practitioners.
• Deborah Poe Room J
 “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, and Andrea Barrett, 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.
• Sam Ligon Room D
“Short-Short Story Workshop”   
This class will be a kind of follow up to Tuesday’s discussion of the short-short story, though attendance at the Tuesday session is not a requirement. In this class we’ll be workshopping 7-10 student participants’ short-short fiction—400 words max per story. A sign up sheet for those who would like to workshop a story will circulate at Tuesday’s meeting, and will also be available throughout the week, though once it fills, the opportunity to present fiction to the workshop will be gone. While we’ll only workshop the fiction of 7–10 writers here, our discussion of the short-short, based of those works, should benefit anyone interested in the form.
• Michael Schein Room H
“The Northwest Novel”
When we think about the “Northwest novel” we might think of examples as dissimilar as Ken Kesey’s “Sometimes a Great Notion,” Annie Dillard’s “The Living,” David Guterson’s “Snow Falling on Cedars,” or David James Duncan’s “The Brothers K.” What makes a novel a Northwest novel? It cannot be as simple as setting the story north of California. We’ll take a look at this question, and use what we learn as a springboard for you to write the first paragraph of your Northwest novel.
• Erin Belieu Room N
“The State of Contemporary American Women’s Poetry”
In this class we will explicate poetry by established and emerging female writers and talk a bit about the state of American poetry in relationship to contemporary currents in feminist thought and activism. Through close analysis, this workshop will generate ideas for the modeling of your own poems as well as encourage you toward your own activism and participation in the poetry world’s critical conversation.
• Kathryn Farris Room K
“Italo Calvino and the Tradition of Imaginary Literature”
In this class, we’ll explore the links between writers like Calvino, Borges, and their more contemporary peers such as Alan Lightman and Ben Marcus. When can an absurdist, magical, or dream-like aside add to an otherwise straight-forward narrative? In other words, what can the techniques of imaginative literature allow a writer of contemporary fiction to do that “realism,” in all of its richness, cannot?
4-5—Craft lecture by Peter Orner
5:30-6:30—Dinner 
7:30—Readings by Erin Belieu; Chris Abani
9:15—Book-signing and reception in Room H of the Schoolhouse Building
 
Sunday, July 25
8—Airport shuttle leaves
8-9—Breakfast
Dorm check out by 11:00 am

MORNING WORKSHOP FACULTY:

Chris Abani is the author of, most recently, “Song for Night,” a novella about a child soldier in Africa. The Los Angeles Times called Abani’s novel “Graceland,” the story of a Nigerian Elvis impersonator, one of the best books of 2002. Other books include “The Virgin of Flames,” “Becoming Abigail,” and “Hands Washing Water.”

Erin Belieu is the author of three poetry collections. Her first book, “Infanta,” was a winner of the National Poetry Series, selected by Hayden Carruth. “One Above & One Below” won the Midland Authors Prize in poetry. “Black Box” was a finalist in 2007 for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Erin teaches at Florida State University.

Denise Chávez is widely regarded as one of the leading playwrights, novelists, and nonfiction writers of the southwestern United States. She is also the Artistic Director of the Crossing Borders Festival in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Her novels include “The Last of the Menu Girls,” “Face of an Angel,” and “Loving Pedro Infanta.” 

Martín Espada is the author of sixteen books, including two recent collections of poems:  “Crucifixion in the Plaza de Armas,” and “La Tumba de Buenaventura Roig.” He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including two NEA Fellowships. Poems have appeared in many periodicals, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The Nation.

Dana Levin’s first book, “In the Surgical Theatre,” was published by American Poetry Review in 1999; Copper Canyon Press brought out her second book, “Wedding Day,” in 2005. Work has appeared in many anthologies, including “The Poet’s Child,” “This Art,” and “American Poetry,” “The Next Generation,” and in many literary journals.

Peter Orner’s story “The Raft” was selected for inclusion in the Best American Short Stories of 2001 by Barbara Kingsolver, and work has appeared in The Atlantic and the Paris Review, among other venues. “The Raft” is being made into a movie starring Ed Asner. Orner is also the author of the novel “The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo.”

Ana Menéndez was born to Cuban exile parents who fled to Los Angeles, California in 1964. She worked as a journalist in the nineteen-nineties before turning to fiction with the collection of short stories “In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd.” Menéndez published her first novel, “Loving Che,” in 2003. Her second novel, “The Last War,” appeared in 2009.

Bich Minh Nguyen published her first novel, “Short Girls,” in 2009. Her memoir-in-essays, “Stealing Buddha's Dinner,” was published by Viking Penguin in 2007 and received the PEN/Jerard Award. Her work has also appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines. She currently teaches at Purdue University.

AFTERNOON WORKSHOP FACULTY

Lana Hechtman Ayers, originally from New York, lives in the Pacific Northwest where she works as a manuscript consultant and writing workshop facilitator. She is the poetry editor of Crab Creek Review and the editor of Concrete Wolf Poetry Chapbook Press. Her poems appear in many literary journals, as well as in three full-length collections.

Sheila Bender publishes Writing It Real, an online instructional magazine for those who write from personal experience. Her books include a memoir, A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief and Writing and Publishing Personal Essays, among other titles. She teaches for Pima College in Tucson, AZ and at the Richard Hugo House.

Wendy Call teaches creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University and Seattle’s Richard Hugo House and works as a developmental editor. She is co-editor of Telling True Stories. Her journalism, creative nonfiction, and translations (from Spanish) of poetry and fiction have appeared in more than forty journals in seven countries.

Sayantani Dasgupta has master’s degrees in history and creative writing. Her essay “On Seeking Answers” won a 2010 Pushcart Prize Special Mention. She teaches at the University of Idaho and is currently writing a memoir set against the backdrop of political, social, and religious turmoil in India, Bangladesh, and the United States.

Kathryn Farris holds an MFA from Brown University. Her translations have been included in anthologies from Ecco and Graywolf presses. Current work is forthcoming in Verse.

Kitty Hoffman teaches creative writing at the University of Victoria, where she is on the editorial board of the Malahat Review. Her award-winning writing has appeared in Prism, Event, Grain, and several anthologies. She is presently working on a memoir about culture and exile. She holds a Ph.D in American Literature.

Susan Landgraf’s chapbook “Other Voices” came out in 2009. Her poems have appeared in nearly two hundred magazines, including Poet Lore, Ploughshares, and the Cincinnati Poetry Review. Honors include grants to travel and study in South Africa, Namibia, Peru, and Bolivia. She currently teaches at Highline Community College.

Gary Lemons is the author of the collections of poetry “Fresh Horses” and “Bristol Bay”. He is under contract with Red Hen for a new book, entitled “Snake”. Lemons has worked as a fisherman, logger, tree planter, and iron worker, and now lives in Port Townsend, where he teaches yoga with his wife at their studio.

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.

Deborah Poe is assistant professor of English at Pace University and fiction editor of the online journal of the arts, Drunken Boat. She is the author of the poetry collections Elements and Our Parenthetical Ontology. Poe has received several literary awards including three Pushcart Prize nominations for her poetry.

Bill Ransom is the author of seven novels and seven poetry collections. He was one of the founders of Centrum and was the first director of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference. His latest collection is “The Woman and the War Baby”. Ransom currently serves as Academic Dean of Curriculum at The Evergreen State College in Olympia. 

Susan Rich is the author of “The Alchemist’s Kitchen,” “Cures Include Travel,” and “The Cartographer’s Tongue,” winner of the PEN USA Award. She has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, Fulbright Foundation, and Artists Trust. This year her poems appear in the Antioch Review, Harvard Review, and the Southern Review.
 
Stan Sanvel Rubin’s third full length collection of poetry, “Hidden Sequel”, won the Barrow Street Book Prize. His work has appeared in such places as the Iowa Review, the Georgia Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and others. Rubin writes essay-reviews of poetry for Water-Stone Review and directs PLU’s Rainier Writing Workshop.

Michael Schein is the author of the forthcoming novel “Just Deceits” as well as a stage play. Poems, short stories, and essays (yes, some on baseball and bicycling) have appeared in many literary journals. Michael is a two-time Pushcart nominee, and directs the annual LiTFUSE Poets’ Workshop in Tieton, Washington.
 
Tamara Kaye Sellman Avid blogger Tamara Kaye Sellman is the founding editor of Margin: Exploring Modern Magical Realism. She teaches magical realism workshops online for Writer’s Rainbow and blogging classes for writers through the Bainbridge Island park district.

Judith Skillman has authored twelve collections of poetry, most recently, “The Never.” She has won awards from the Academy of American Poets and other organizations, and her poems have appeared in such journals as Prairie Schooner, FIELD, and the Iowa Review. Skillman holds an M.A. in English Literature from University of Maryland.

Jeremy Voigt’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Willow Springs, Georgetown Review, Washington Square, REED Magazine, and Talking River Review. His chapbook “Neither Rising Nor Falling” was published by Finishing Line Press in 2009, the title poem of which was featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac.

Lindsay Wilson teaches English at Truckee Meadows Community College where he edits The Meadow. He is the author of four chapbooks, has been a finalist for the Philip Levine Prize, and has poetry published or forthcoming in The Portland Review, Gulf Stream, The South Dakota Review, Talking River Review, and The Blue Mesa Review.

Maya Jewell Zeller’s poems have won awards from the Crab Orchard Review and the Florida Review, among other magazines. Recent work can be found in New South, Bellingham Review, and Mississippi Review. She has taught creative writing to fourth graders, senior citizens, and high school students, and currently teaches at Gonzaga.

Daniel Zolinsky is a photographer based in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He has traveled and photographed Asia, Africa, North America, and Europe with a strong emphasis on the Mediterranean. Zolinsky has presented personal and group exhibitions, and is currently working on projects on the Mediterranean as well as the U.S./Mexican border.

MORNING FREEWRITE and MORNING EXERCISES FACULTY

Ellie Mathews has published four books and a dozen short stories. She has received awards from Milkweed Editions, the Seattle Arts Commission and has been a Fishtrap fellow.

Morning Exercises Class Description
Pump a little literary iron with Ellie as she guides writers at all levels through a selection of structured, loosening-up exercises. On the circuit will be idea-generation, rhythm, beginnings and endings, defining elements, and deepening the emotional effect of what’s on the page. Stretch and lift. Ellie will bring prompts, props and examples; participants will do the rest, since the emphasis will be on taking pen in hand and writing. These drop-in sessions are for anyone who believes that practice make perfect.