For the past four years Rebecca Brown has guided the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference tirelessly. With a passionate understanding of what writers need in order to make breakthroughs in their work, she designed new programming, made needed changes, and was a gracious, welcoming presence to a new generation of writers at Centrum.

New writers flocked to Fort Worden from all over the country to learn and have conversations in a wide variety of forms, including fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and cross-genre writing.

Centrum Artistic Directors select faculty and design and shape Centrum’s year-round artistic experiences. Terms are kept deliberately short to allow for continuous change and renewal of programmatic areas.

Rebecca is one of the most welcoming, caring, and outward-looking people we’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. The tremendous work that she did for the faculty, staff, and participants behind the scenes was akin to that of a mama bear, caring for everyone in the same passionate way.

In the same way, she transformed Centrum’s gatherings to include voices of divergent cultural aethetics and cultural grounding. She brought everyone together as a big house, which sparked conversations and literary practices that could not have happened any other way.

Because of Rebecca’s role as Artistic Director, she was not able to teach workshops. That ends this October 9-12 as Rebecca joins poet Ilya Kaminsky in an intensive and celebratory weekend gathering that will offer residential workshops in fiction and poetry in a supportive, inspirational environment–and a chance to work with Rebecca intimately back at the Fort Worden campus. 

You’ll find yourself in the companionship of a small, tightly knit group of writers, share communal meals with Rebecca and Ilya, and be able to soak yourself in the literary life with lots of conversation, while getting much individual attention to your work.

The two workshops will be separate—Rebecca will lead a workshop for fiction writers designed to lead you to new stories and new work, while Ilya will lead a similar workshop for poets—but you’ll be able to interact with participants in the other genre over meals and evening gatherings.

For more information, including registration information, please follow this link. 

Thank you, Rebecca, for everything that you have done, and everything you are, and the tremendous legacy you leave behind at Centrum.