It was a relaxing Sunday for everyone, and since everything was closed in town (as is the Catholic custom in such European towns), we stayed at the hotel and concentrated on our writing, taking breaks in the pool. Rita Banerjee taught her class on Emotion & Suspense in Theater, Poetry and (Non)Fiction, and we all learned about Rasa theory. In the evening, we enjoyed listening to each other read our original work.
Today, we continued to admire the many wonders of the city. Some of us enjoyed visiting Parc Güell, the park designed by Gaudí as a feast for the senses. Others visited la Sagrada Familia, Gaudí’s cathedral that started construction in 1882 and is still being built. They expect to finish within 15-20 years, so maybe some of us will plan to go back to see it! In the afternoon, Bret Anthony Johnston taught the second part of his Straight Outta Character Class, focusing on point of view this time. In the evening, we went out to dinner as a group to Teatro Principal on Las Ramblas and enjoyed our gazpacho while watching an amazing flamenco show. Tomorrow, we are off to France, so adios Barcelona. It’s been fun!
Today, we enjoyed some free writing time in the morning after eating the breakfast of kings at our amazing hotel. Some of us took a dip in the rooftop pool, and others continued to explore the city. In the afternoon, Bret Anthony Johnston wowed everyone with his amazing class, Straight Outta Character: Plot. The class proved useful to all of us and gave us some great, practical tips for structuring our stories. In the evening, we shared an incredibly delicious meal at Thali Indian Restaurant. We shared a plethora of tasty, small dishes like chana masala, palak paneer, and butter chicken.
We are thrilled to announce that our Executive Creative Director, Rita Banerjee, has been appointed as the new Executive Director of Kundiman, a New York-based organization dedicated to providing a nurturing space for Asian American writers. Kundiman, an organization founded by poets Sarah Gambito and Joseph O. Legaspi in 2004, “offers a comprehensive spectrum of arts programming that gives writers opportunities to inscribe their own stories, transforming and enriching the American literary landscape. Kundiman sees literature not only as vehicle for cultural expression but also as an instrument for political dialogue and self-empowerment.”
The Kundiman Executive Board cites Rita’s expertise in Non-Western and Asian American literatures and the international scope of modern South Asian literatures, as well as her language fluency in Bengali as integral to her position at Kundiman, and in the international literary scene. Rita will officially step into this role in September 2016. Please join us in congratulating Rita, as well as supporting all that Kundiman does. Read the full announcement on Rita’s new appointment here.
The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is delighted to announce that Heidi Pitlor and Laura van den Berg will be joining us as full faculty on our upcoming retreats and workshops, and that Lily Hoang and Frederick-Douglass Knowles II will be our newly appointed Summer 2016 Teaching Fellows. More about our new faculty and teaching fellows and their talented work in fiction, editing, publishing, nonfiction, poetry, and performance can be found below:
Heidi Pitlor received her B.A. from McGill University in Montreal and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Emerson College. She eventually became an editor and later a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin (now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). She has been the series editor of The Best American Short Stories since 2007. Her writing has appeared in such publications as Ploughshares, The Huffington Post, and Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today’s Best Women Writers.
Laura van den Berg was raised in Florida and earned her M.F.A. at Emerson College. Her first novel, Find Me, published by FSG last year, was selected as a “Best Book of 2015” by NPR, Time Out New York, and BuzzFeed, among others. Find Me was longlisted for the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize. She is also the author of two collections of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, 2009) and The Isle of Youth (FSG, 2013). What the World was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection and shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. The Isle of Youth was named a “Best Book of 2013” by over a dozen outlets, including NPR, The Boston Globe, and O, The Oprah Magazine; a finalist for the Frank O’Connor Award; and received The Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters and the 2015 Bard Fiction Prize. Laura lives in Brooklyn with her husband and dog, and she is currently at work on a new story collection and a new novel, both forthcoming from FSG. Beginning in the fall of 2016, she will be a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard.
Lily Hoang is the author of five books, including A Bestiary (winner of the inaugural Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s Nonfiction Contest) and Changing (recipient of a PEN Open Books Award). With Joshua Marie Wilkinson, she edited the anthology The Force of What’s Possible: Writers on Accessibility and the Avant-Garde. She is Director of the MFA program at New Mexico State University. She serves as Prose Editor at Puerto del Sol and Editor for Jaded Ibis Press.
Frederick-Douglass Knowles II
is a poet, educator and activist involved in community education and the performing arts. He has competed on two National Poetry Slam Teams and served as the 2011 Connecticut Slam Team coach. His works have been featured in Poems on the Road to Peace: A Collective Tribute to Dr. King Volume 2, Peabody Museum of Natural History by Yale University Press, The East Haddam Stage Company of Connecticut, The 13th Annual Acacia Group Conference at California State University, Folio –a Southern Connecticut State University literary magazine, Lefoko –a Botswana, Southern Africa Hip-Hop magazine and Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS from the Black Diaspora by Third World Press. Frederick-Douglass is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Three Rivers Community College where he infuses English Composition with social injustice.
Please give a warm welcome to our new CWW Faculty! We’re excited to have such wonderful writers join our team!
~ Cambridge Writers’ Workshop
The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is delighted to announce our new Media (Audio/Visual) Development Intern, Anna-Celestrya Carr. A participant on our 2016 Spring in Newport Retreat, Anna-Celestrya will be helping our group develop new audio and video projects for our website.
Anna-Celestrya Carr is a Metis/Anishinaabe artist, filmmaker, writer, dancer and speaker. She graduated from both the Vancouver Film School and the National Screen Institute’s New Voices program in Canada. While at NSI she created Dreamcatcher: A short dramatic fantasy of Aboriginal mythology. In 2012 she created Tik-A-Lee-Kick, an honest and candid telling of a young Aboriginal woman’s perspective on the role of the Little People funded by the Video Pool Aboriginal Media Art Initiative. She has previously attended the University of Manitoba School of Art.
Anna-Celestrya has worked for the National Film Board of Canada and Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art Gallery. In 2009, she received the Sybil Shack Human Rights Youth Award for her work on violence against women. She was one of the core organizers for the RebELLEs Pan-Canadian Young Feminist Gathering, attended by over 350 young women from across Canada on May 20 -23, 2011. Later that year she represented RebELLEs as an attendee of the 8th World March of Women International meeting in Quezon City, Philippines from November 20th to 25th, 2011. In 2012, she received the YMCA-YWCA Women of Distinction Award in Public Awareness and Communications for her continuing work. She became one of Ace Burpee’s 100 most fascinating Manitobans, a distinction given out yearly by a beloved and influential radio host.
Anna-Celestrya focuses her creative energy on her Aboriginal roots and on advancing the rights of Aboriginal women in North America. She has worked with many organizations and institutions to promote human rights and peace. The artwork that she is best known for is The Men’s Banner Project. This work is a combination of interactive performance and installation, about which she also lectures.
The Men’s Banner Project is an award winning visual, performance and interactive based artwork. Through her art Anna-Celestrya asks men to make the promise not to use their hands in violence against women, not to ignore or tolerate the violence they witness. The banner is a tool to begin dialogue, show support and build a stronger community through art. She is not an organization, she’s an artist and this is part of her body of work. To her art is answering a question. Trying to solve a problem. The Men’s Banner Project is her response to the missing and murdered women from the Aboriginal Community. She felt compelled to do something artistic and interactive. She noticed that there are many actions, organizations and campaigns run by women for women. She needed to involve men in a positive way.
This year Anna-Celestrya will be launching two blogs, one documenting her 9 years of work with the Men’s Banner Project and another dedicated to her writing, art and adventures with her family.
Please give a warm welcome to Anna-Celestrya Carr! We’re excited to work with her this year!
– Cambridge Writers’ Workshop
The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is proud to announce that one of our 2015 Summer in Paris Writing Retreat participant has had her work published in The Citron Review. G. Evelyn Lampart’s story “Fire Sale” is part of Citron Six: Summer 2016 Issue.
G. Evelyn Lampart is both a practitioner and a consumer of mental health services. In this unique role, she runs an art program in the mental health clinic that served to help her heal. Evelyn is also a student at the Writers Studio in New York City. Her writing appears in Rozlyn, an anthology, Nous 5, Dirty Chai, R.KV.R.Y., Poetica, and The Quotable.
The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is proud to announce that Claire Ince, a talented writer, playwright, and alumna of our 2015 Spring in Newport, RI Writing Retreat, has written a new film called Bazodee. Bazodee, which is directed by Todd Kessler, will open in movie theaters across the United States on August 5, 2016.
Bazodee, set on the island of Trinidad, follows the story of Anita Panchouri (Natalie Perera), the dutiful Indian daughter of a deep in debt businessman (Kabir Bedi) is about to marry a wealthy Londoner (Staz Nair) when a chance encounter with a local singer, Lee de Leon (Soca music star Machel Montano in his film debut) sets things askew. In search of a muse, de Leon agrees to perform at the engagement party for both families. Unable to deny their mutual attraction, and with the excitement of Carnival approaching, Anita must now choose between the answer to her family’s financial prayers and the possibility of real love.
Claire Ince is the writer-producer of the movie musical Bazodee. An MFA graduate of New York University’s Dramatic Writing Program, Tisch School of the Arts, Claire previously produced the reality adventure show Run’bout for AT&T/Cingular Wireless Caribbean and the children’s TV pilot The Baobab Tree (a selection of the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival.) Claire won best screenplay for Bazodee (formerly known as Scandalous!) at the Bahamas International Film Festival’s Film Residency Program in 2008. She is also an alumna of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Spring 2015 in Newport, RI Writing Retreat.
Spider Cult: The Musical, an original apocalyptic lesbian, fringe, sci-fi horror, burlesque musical, will have its debut at the American Repertory Theatre in Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA on June 24th, with an additional showing on June 26th. Written and produced by CWW instructor and playwright Jade Sylvan, Spider Cult is a spin-off from a previous burlesque show called Revenge of the Robot Battle Nuns by the Boston burlesque group Slaughterhouse Sweethearts. It follows Scout, a temptress from Battle Nuns who led the heroes astray into her web of lust, and shows how she became such an evil villainess. This story stars some of Boston’s most known burlesque performers, including Fem Bones, Jane Doe, and Bella Gunz.
Spider Cult will run for four shows on June 24th (at 6:30 pm and 10 pm) and June 26th (at 5:30 pm and 8 pm) at the Oberon Theatre. For more information on the show and how to purchase tickets, please visit check out more information here. The musical was successfully funded via Kickstarter. And here’s an NSFW preview of the show below:
The world is violent and mercurial—it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love—love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.
-Tennessee Williams
The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is shocked and saddened to hear of the shooting that happened on early Sunday morning in Orlando, Florida, at Pulse Nightclub. To many in the LGBTQ+ community, Pulse was not only a place to celebrate personal identity, but a sanctuary against the very hate that inspired Sunday morning’s attacker. In response, we’re inspired by Tennessee Williams’s words: when the world begins to burn, only love can extinguish the flame.
If you’re committed to ending gun violence in America, please consider signing a petition to strengthen anti-gun laws and contacting your congressional representative. You can also support the families of the victims of the Pulse shootings by contributing to Equality Florida’s Pulse Victims Fund.
– Cambridge Writers’ Workshop
Cambridge Writers' Workshop 