Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Virtual Summer Writing Retreat * July 11 – August 1, 2020

Join us for the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop’s Virtual Summer Writing Retreat each Saturday from July 11 – August 1, 2020. Our featured faculty includes David Shields, Tim Horvath, Rita Banerjee, and Diana Norma Szokolyai.  All of our classes will be held online, and students are encouraged to register for each class by 11 am EDT on the Friday before each class meeting.

How to Register:

Students can sign-up individually for each class for $100 per class, or join a course series for $200 or $300 per class unit. To register for class, please send in a short 1-5 page writing sample, 2 professional references, and a cover letter conveying your interest and a short bio of who you are as an author and where you are with you creative writing. This information will help our writing faculty get to know you as a writer and your writing goals. Writers of all genres (poetry, fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, and film) are welcome to participate in our virtual summer writing retreat.

To join our Virtual Summer Writing Retreat, you will need access to broadband internet and a working video-camera and microphone on your computer. All classes will be taught on either Google Hangouts or Zoom. Invitations to class URLS will be sent out to all registered users before our classes begin, and instructors may share reading materials for class with registered students via Dropbox or Google Drive. All classes are first-come first-serve for registration, and in case a class fills to capacity, we will refund you in full.

More information regarding our faculty, scheduling, and how to register for classes follows below.  Sign up now for each class individually or as a package at cww.submittable.com!

Class Schedule:

Featured Courses:

About David Shields:

David Shields is the internationally bestselling author of twenty-two books, including Reality Hunger (recently named one of the 100 most important books of the last decade by LitHub), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (New York Times bestseller), Black Planet (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and Other People: Takes & Mistakes (NYTBR Editors’ Choice). Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention was published in 2018, The Trouble With Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power appeared in 2019. James Franco’s adaptation of I Think You’re Totally Wrong: A Quarrel, which Shields co-wrote and co-stars in, was released in 2017 (available now on Amazon, iTunes/Apple TV, Vudu, Vimeo, Kanopy, and Google Play); Shields wrote, produced, and directed Lynch: A History, a 2019 documentary film about Marshawn Lynch’s use of silence, echo, and mimicry as key tools of resistance (rave reviews in the New Yorker, the Nation, and dozens of other publications; film festival awards all over the world; available now on all of the same platforms listed above). A recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships and a senior contributing editor of Conjunctions, Shields has published fiction and nonfiction in the New York Times MagazineHarper’sEsquireYale ReviewSalonSlateTin House, A Public SpaceMcSweeney’sBelieverHuffington PostLos Angeles Review of Books, and Best American Essays. His books have been translated into two dozen languages.

Join us from 1-3 pm EDT on Saturday July 11, 18, and 25 for David Shields’s Summer Writing Retreat series Six Prison Breaks (Beyond Traditional Narrative), or How to make your work reflect what it feels like to be alive now rather than what it felt like to be alive in 1920.”

In this class we’ll investigate the following topics through a combination of brief videotaped lecture, live lecture, handouts, and class discussion, exploring the myriad ways in which you might deploy similar strategies in your own work.

1. Class 1 – Saturday, July 11, 1 -3 pm EDT online

Brevity and Journal. We’ll read and discuss flash nonfiction, mini-essays, prose-poems, poeticized journals, thematized diaries. All these forms are a way to try to lean in to the velocity and interconnectedness of contemporary existence without, in any way, sacrificing depth, rigor, complexity, nuance, sophistication.

2. Class 2 – Saturday, July 18, 1 – 3 pm EDT online

Collage, Remix, Appropriation. In our second class, we’ll build off our first class and think about how to take these fragments, these crystallized moments, and build them into an entire book. We’ll also explore how these fragments might be yours, but they might also—when transformed—come from the culture at large.

3. Class 3 – Saturday, July 25, 1-3 pm EDT onlinePhoto,

Film, and Collaboration. The fractal elements need not be written. They might still image or cinematic montage. And they might arise from your collaboration with someone else. The point of all these gestures is to free yourself up from seeing a book or essay or story or novel as a dutifully linear operation. Maybe it could be a liberatingly open-ended text.

About Diana Norma Szokolyai:

Diana Norma Szokolyai is a writer and yoga teacher. Her books are CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos & Sourcebook for Creative Writing, Parallel Sparrows, and Roses in the Snow. Her poetry manuscript Milk & Water, was a finalist for Hunger Mountain’s 2020 May Day Mountain chapbook series. Her poetry was also shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize and received honorable mention in the 87th Annual Writer’s Digest Competition. Her work has been published in MER VOX Quarterly, VIDA, Quail Bell Magazine, The Boston Globe, Luna Luna Magazineand has been anthologized in Other Countries: Contemporary Poets Rewiring History, Teachers As Writers, and Die Morgendämmerung der Worte Moderner Poesie- Atlas der Roma und Sinti. Her poetry – music collaborations have hit the Creative Commons Hot 100 list and been featured on WFMU-FM. She is co-founder and Artistic Director of Chagall Performance Art Collaborative and the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. She first learned yoga and meditation at the age of fourteen and continued to practice and learn a variety of styles of yoga over the next 24 years, until deciding to pursue her yoga teacher certification to deepen her practice. Diana Norma Szokolyai specializes in Hatha flow, Yin and meditation. Her teaching style focuses on supporting students to set intentions, find proper alignment, and engage not only with the physical, but also the philosophical and spiritual aspects of yoga. She teaches at Green Tea Yoga in Salem, MA.

Join us from 10 a.m. – 12 noon EDT on Saturday July 11 & 18 for Diana Norma Szokolyai’s Summer Writing Retreat series “YOGA MEETS WRITING: The Root & Heart Chakras”:

CLASS 1: July 11 10 a.m. – 12 noon: Yoga Meets Writing: The Root Chakra Session

10 a.m.- 10:45 a.m. Chakra Flow YogaIn Sanskrit, “chakra” means wheel or disk, and in yoga, we refer to seven chakras, or spiritual energy centers in the body. When the chakras are in balance, we feel vibrant, joyful, and serene. Chakra flow will incorporate a hatha flow, focusing on alignment and energizing asanas, as well as a calming yin flow. All Levels Welcome!  

         -break to refresh and change – 

11:00 a.m.- 12 noon Craft of Writing Seminar: ALL GENRES (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction)

After having practiced yoga for the first hour, in the second hour, we will discuss how the root chakra relates to our writing practice and rituals. The root chakra governs our feelings of security, and on the flip side, fear. We will discuss how these feelings influence our writing rituals and share practical information and best practices. We will also discuss how the root chakra can be used as a metaphor to dig deeper into the roots of our narratives. Looking at character backstories, etymology, and history, we will discover what is under the earth of our narratives and what grounds our storytelling craft. This second part will be part lecture, part discussion forum, and will also include writing exercises.

CLASS 2: July 18 10 a.m. – 12 noon: Yoga Meets Writing: The Heart Chakra Session

10 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. Chakra Flow Yoga
In Sanskrit, “chakra” means wheel or disk, and in yoga, we refer to seven chakras, or spiritual energy centers in the body. When the chakras are in balance, we feel vibrant, joyful, and serene. Chakra flow will incorporate a hatha flow, focusing on alignment and energizing asanas, as well as a calming yin flow. All Levels Welcome! 

         -break to refresh and change – 

11:00 a.m.- 12 noon Craft of Writing Seminar: ALL GENRES (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction)
After having practiced yoga for the first hour, in the second hour, we will discuss how the heart chakra governs our feelings of compassion, empathy, gratitude, but also on the flip side, jealousy and envy. We will talk about how these vulnerable feelings enter into our poems, narratives and stories through the speaker or characters. We will also discuss the question: “What is at the heart of a poem or narrative?” Sometimes, it takes a little opening up, or peeling back of our first draft to get to the heart moments of our writing. We will discuss revision strategies that can help us think more deeply about this sort of question.

CLASS 3: August 1, 2020 1-3 p.m.  Surrealist Literary Salon & Reading With Summer Writers Join us from 1 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday August 1, 2020 for Surrealist Literary Salon & Reading with Summer Writers

Come play Surrealist and OULIPO Literary Games with Diana Norma Szokolyai and Writers from the CWW Virtual Summer Retreat. After playing some fun and generative literary games, participants will be invited to read (5 min max) from any piece written during the games or over the course of the CWW Virtual Summer Writing Workshop. It is optional to read– feel free to just come for the literary games!

About Rita Banerjee:

Rita Banerjee is the Director of the MFA in Writing & Publishing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and Creative Executive Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop.  She’s the author of several books including CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, 2018), the poetry collection Echo in Four Beats (FLP, 2018), which was nominated for the 2019 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize at the Academy of American Poets, the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps (SPR, 2016), and the poetry chapbook Cracklers at Night (FLP, 2010).  She is the co-writer of Burning Down the Louvre (2021), a documentary film about race, intimacy, and tribalism in the United States and in France. Her work also appears in PANK, Nat. Brut., Poets & Writers, Academy of American Poets, Vermont Public Radio, and elsewhere.

Join us from 10 am – 12 pm EDT on Saturday July 25 and August 1 for Rita Banerjee’s Summer Writing Retreat class “Emotion & Suspense in Theatre, Poetry, and (Non)Fiction”:

Plato argues that human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.  And before staging Kalidasa’s The Recognition of Śākuntalā, the director challenges his actress-lover: “As though in a painting, the entire audience has had their emotion colored through your melody.  So now—what shall we perform to sustain the mood?”  In this class, we will explore how creating vivid emotional worlds between characters and within storylines can build suspense, sustain drama, and lure the reader deeper in. Whether you’re currently working on a short story, novel, screenplay, theatrical play, lyrical essay, memoir, or narrative poem this class will help you craft a unique emotional landscape

1. Session 1 – Saturday, July 25, 10 am – 12 pm EDT online
Class seminar and writing session on rasa theory.

2. Session 2 – Saturday, August 1, 10 am – 12 pm EDT online
Workshop and sharing of writing featuring students’ rasa theory exercises.

About Tim Horvath:

Tim Horvath is the author of Understories (Bellevue Literary Press), which won the New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction, and Circulation (sunnyoutside). His fiction has appeared in ConjunctionsAGNIHarvard Review, and many other journals, and his book reviews appear in Georgia ReviewThe Brooklyn Rail, and American Book Review. His novel-in-progress focuses on the lives of contemporary classical composers and musicians. He has taught Creative Writing in the Granada, Spain, program for the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop, and in the BFA and MFA programs at New England College, including the Institute of Art and Design.

Join us from 3:30-5:30 pm EDT on Saturday July 11, 18, 25 and August 1 for Tim Horvath’s Summer Writing Retreat series:

Class 1. Writing from the Senses in the Age of Social Distancing

We rely on our senses all the time, as humans to navigate the world, and as writers to draw readers into our characters’ lives and worlds. But what happens to writing in a time of social distancing, when we find ourselves in isolation, wary of touch, breathing into masks, longing for restaurants, and watching history unfold on screens? I’d suggest that it’s all the more important that we reconnect with our senses, both for our well-being and our creativity. In this class, we’ll aim to do so.

         Session 1 – Saturday, July 11, 3:30 – 5:30 pm EDT online

In Part One, we’ll explore the senses of sight and sound, looking at how writers use imagery and the sounds and rhythms of language to make scenes, stories, narrative essays, and poems come alive. We’ll read authors whose writing is so vivid we feel as though we can enter it, and writers whose voice is so powerful that it feels like music.

        Session 2 – Saturday, July 18, 3:30 – 5:30 pm EDT online

In Part Two, we’ll explore the senses of touch, smell, and taste, again delving into how they can enhance writing across genres. Again, we’ll read authors whose writing makes you feel the rush of a rodeo ride, or who transport you through scent and food into entire realms of association and memory.In each case, we’ll use these as springboards for our own writing, whether you’re starting from scratch or working on an ongoing project. It isn’t necessary to take both of these, as they will stand alone, although they will also fit together well.

Class 2. Hopscotching Across Languages: Drawing Inspiration from Spanish Language Literature in Translation

It is a given that writers must learn to read closely, with attention to nuance and craft, to unravel the methods by which other writers have managed to tell stories effectively and adapt them for their own purposes. In this class, we’ll focus on contemporary writers in Spanish.

         Session 1 – Saturday, July 25, 3:30 – 5:30 pm EDT online

In Part One, we’ll look at some canonical writers from the last century such as Borges,  Valenzuela, Puig, Uhart, and Cortázar, and explore how social and political conditions shaped the so-called “Latin American Boom.” Apart from an appreciation of their work on the page, what can we take away from their work? We’ll do some exercises that take the playful spirit of these writers and welcome it into our own writing.

        Session 2 – Saturday, August 1, 3:30 – 5:30 pm EDT online

In Part Two, we’ll look at how today’s Spanish language writers are both continuing and radically transforming that tradition today. In particular, we’ll examine writers such as Ariana Harwicz, Andrés Neuman, Cristina Rivera Garza, and Samanta Schweblin, each of whom bends narrative and language, and thus our understanding of reality itself. We’ll also explore the fraught, infinitely rich topic of translation, discussing its complexities and even comparing a passage or two in English and Spanish. What language choices did the translator have to make? What was lost and gained? As we look at translation, we’ll pose the further question of what we can learn from it as we seek to “translate” any event, image, idea, or experience into language. In this case, too, we will do some exercises that use these writers and concepts as points of departure. It isn’t necessary to take both of these, as they will stand alone, although they will also fit together well.

Join the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop at AWP 2020!!

For those writers, editors, and lit fans traveling to the 2020 AWP Conference (March 4-7) in San Antonio, TX this week, come stop by the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop’s AWP Bookfair Table at T2164!  The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop AWP Off-site Reading will be taking place as scheduled on Saturday, March 7 from 5:30-7:30 pm at Rosella Coffee House.  More details on that follow below.

However, please note that CWW Creative Director Rita Banerjee’s panel “Dismantling the White Imagination: On Intimacy in Creative Nonfiction” featuring our Summer in Paris Nonfiction Faculty David Shields on Saturday, March 7 from 9-10:15 am in Room 205, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level (San Antonio, TX) has been cancelled due to health concerns.

Course registration for our 2020 Spring in New Orleans Writing Retreat (March 19-22) and Summer in Paris Writing Retreat (July 16-21) is now live! Apply by March 10 for our NOLA Retreat and May 30 for our Paris Retreat on cww.submittable.com.

Our 2020 award-winning faculty includes essayist David Shields, playwright Stephen Aubrey, poet Diana Norma Szokolyai, and poet and essayist Rita Banerjee

Join the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop for our offsite reading at Rosella Coffee House(203 E Jones Ave, Suite 101) in San Antonio, TX! Featured readers include Rita Banerjee, Madeleine Barnes, Alex Carrigan, Kristina Marie Darling, Charlene Elsby, Adilene Hernandez, Tim Horvath, Samuel Kóláwọlé, Rachel Kurasz, and Mari Pack! Come celebrate with a gorgeous night of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and speculative writing!  More info on the reading & featured authors below!  (Please note: that some authors may not be in attendance due to health concerns).

 

Featured Readers:

Rita Banerjee is the Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop and editor of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).   She is the author of the poetry collection Echo in Four Beats (Finishing Line Press, March 2018), which was nominated for the 2019 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize at the Academy of American Poets, featured on the Ruth Stone Foundation podcast, and named one of Book Riot’s “Must-Read Poetic Voices of Split This Rock 2018”, and was selected by Finishing Line Press as their 2018 nominee for the National Book Award in Poetry.  Banerjee is also the author of the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps (Spider Road Press, 2016), and the poetry chapbook Cracklers at Night (Finishing Line Press, 2010).  She is the co-writer and co-director of Burning Down the Louvre (2020), a documentary film about race, intimacy, and tribalism in the United States and in France.  She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington, and she is a recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Artist’s Grant, the Tom and Laurel Nebel Fellowship, and South Asia Initiative and Tata Grants.  Her writing appears in the Academy of American PoetsPoets & Writers, PANK, Nat. Brut.The ScofieldThe Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mass Poetry, Hyphen Magazine, Los Angeles Review of BooksElectric Literature, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, AWP WC&C Quarterly, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Riot Grrrl Magazine, The Fiction Project, Objet d’Art, KBOO Radio’s APA Compass, and elsewhere. She is the Director of the MFA in Writing & Publishing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and an Associate Scholar of Comparative Literature at Harvard.  She is currently working on a novel, a book on South Asian literary modernisms, and a collection of lyric essays on race, sex, politics, and everything cool.  Her writing is represented by agents Jeff Kleinman and Jamie Chambliss of Folio Literary Management.

Madeleine Barnes is a poet and visual artist from Pittsburgh living in Brooklyn. She is a doctoral fellow at CUNY’s Ph.D. Program in English, and the recipient of a New York State Summer Writers Institute Fellowship, two Academy of American Poets prizes, and the Princeton Poetry Prize. Her second chapbook, Light Experiments, is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press this year, and her protest embroideries were recently featured in Boston Accent Lit. She serves as Poetry Editor at Cordella Magazine.

Alex Carrigan is an associate editor with the American Correctional Association. He has edited and proofed the anthologies CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, 2018) and Her Plumage: An Anthology of Women’s Writings from Quail Bell Magazine (2019). He has had fiction, poetry, and media reviews published in Quail Bell Magazine, Life in 10 Minutes, Realms YA Fantasy Literary Magazine, Mercurial Stories, Lambda Literary Review, Stories About Penises (Guts Publishing, 2019) and the forthcoming anthologies Closet Cases: Queers on What We Wear (Et Alia Press, 2020) and Whale Road Review (Summer 2020). He currently lives in Alexandria, VA.  

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of thirty books, including Look to Your Left: The Poetics of Spectacle (University of Akron Press, 2020); Je Suis L’Autre: Essays & Interrogations (C&R Press, 2017), which was named one of the “Best Books of 2017” by The Brooklyn Rail; and DARK HORSE: Poems (C&R Press, 2018). Her work has been recognized with three residencies at Yaddo, where she has held both the Martha Walsh Pulver Residency for a Poet and the Howard Moss Residency in Poetry; a Fundación Valparaíso fellowship; a Hawthornden Castle Fellowship, funded by the Heinz Foundation; an artist-in-residence position at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris; three residencies at the American Academy in Rome; two grants from the Whiting Foundation; a Morris Fellowship in the Arts; and the Dan Liberthson Prize from the Academy of American Poets, among many other awards and honors. Her poems appear in The Harvard Review, Poetry International, New American Writing, Nimrod, Passages North, The Mid-American Review, and on the Academy of American Poets’ website, Poets.org. She has published essays in The Kenyon Review, Agni, Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, and numerous other magazines. Kristina currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Tupelo Press and Tupelo Quarterly, an opinion columnist at The Los Angeles Review of Books, and a contributing writer at Publishers Weekly.

Charlene Elsby, Ph.D., is the Philosophy Program Director at Purdue University Fort Wayne. Her first novel, HEXIS, was published by CLASH Books. Her second novel, AFFECT, is forthcoming with The Porcupine’s Quill.

 

 

Adilene Hernández is a queer, Latina writer and educator with roots in Atlanta, GA. She earned her B.A. in Creative Writing from Knox College, and she aspires to continue her studies through an M.F.A. program. She is an alumna of the Winter Tangerine Workshop and Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. She is currently at work on her first two novels, both of which focus on family ties and identity in the Latinx culture.

 

 

 

Samuel Kọ́láwọlé was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. His work has appeared in AGNI, Gulf Coast, Washington Square Review and Consequence amongst other literary journals. Samuel was a finalist for the 2018 Graywolf Prize for Africa and winner of the 2019 Editor-Writer Mentorship Program for Diverse Writers. His fiction has been supported with fellowships, residencies, and scholarships from the Norman Mailer Centre, International Writing Program at the University of Iowa,  Columbus State University’s Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, Clarion West Writers Workshop, Wellstone Centre in the Redwoods California, and Island Institute. Samuel was educated at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing with distinction from Rhodes University, South Africa and an MFA in Writing and Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts, USA. His debut novel The Road to Salt Sea is forthcoming from Amistad/Harper Collins.

Rachel Kurasz is a PhD student at Northern Illinois University where she is studying rhetoric/composition and Graphic Novels/Comic Books.  Rachel earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Roosevelt University under the guidance of Christian TeBordo and Kyle Beachy. Rachel also was a Fall 2017 AWP writer to writer under mentor Laura Creedle.  Rachel is currently querying and writing her first graphic novel series entitled “weirdos”.

Mari Pack is a poet and writer from the suburbs of Washington, D.C. She has an MA from the University of Toronto, and is a current MFA candidate at Hunter College.

 

 

We look forward to seeing you at AWP 2020!

Applications for our Summer in Paris (July 16-21, 2020) Writing Retreat are now live! Apply by May 30, 2020!


The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Summer in Paris Writing Retreat will take place July 16-21, 2020 in Paris, France. The retreat offers participating writers of all genres and levels to work alongside award-winning authors and editors. Participating writers will hone their craft and expand their writing skills, while working on new or existing projects. There will also be time to explore the city of Paris in all of its historical, literary, and romantic charm. Situated in heart of Paris’ Montparnasse neighborhood, amongst the fresh and popular open air markets and charming boutiques, the hotel stay is full of Parisian charm.

Retreat activities will include craft of writing seminars and creative writing workshops, and a chance to explore the literary history of Paris. If you’re serious about writing and want to bask in some exquisite French culture this summer, join our retreat in Paris! Tuition is $3,875, which includes lodging in central Paris, creative writing workshops and writing seminars with our supportive and award-winning faculty of writers and editors, and daily breakfast.

Faculty includes internationally renowned authors, David Shields (personal essayist, documentary filmmaker), Diana Norma Szokolyai (poetry, nonfiction), and Rita Banerjee (poetry, nonfiction, fiction).

If you’d like to join us in Paris, please apply online by May 30, 2020, and include $10 application screening fee and a 5-10 page writing sample of poetry or prose. Please also include the following in your cover letter:

1. Full Legal Name
2. Contact & Address
3. Age & Nationality
4. Prior creative writing experience and publications
5. Creative writing goals for the retreat
6. Short one paragraph biography
7. Contact of Two Personal References (Name, Email, Address, Phone, Relationship to Applicant)

Due to limited seats, early applications are strongly encouraged.  Our Scholarship deadline is March 1, 2020, and thus, we encourage applicants to complete their applications by our priority deadline of March 1, 2020. Our Paris retreat tends to fill up quickly, so feel free to send in your application early.

Featured Faculty:

jUSEu2sSo4RfT2C6eSXb6-plQPuQlknv-LggVh9tpUs David Shields is the internationally bestselling author of twenty-two books, including Reality Hunger (named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (New York Times bestseller), Black Planet (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and Other People: Takes & Mistakes (NYTBR Editors’ Choice). The film adaptation of I Think You’re Totally Wrong: A Quarrel was released by First Pond Entertainment in 2017. Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention was published in 2018; The Trouble With Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power is forthcoming in March 2019. A recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships and a senior contributing editor of Conjunctions, Shields has published essays and stories in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Esquire, Yale Review, Salon, Slate, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, and Believer. His work has been translated into two dozen languages.

Diana Norma Szokolyai is a writer and Executive Artistic Director of Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. Her edited volume, CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, will be released by C&R Press in May 2018.  She is author of the poetry collections Parallel Sparrows (honorable mention for Best Poetry Book in the 2014 Paris Book Festival) and Roses in the Snow (first runner-­up Best Poetry Book at the 2009 DIY Book Festival). She also records her poetry with musicians and has collaborated with several composers including David Krebs (US), Robert Lemay (Canada), Claudio Gabriele (Italy), Peter James (UK), Jason Haye (UK), and Sebastian Wesman (Estonia). Diana Norma is a founding member of the performing arts groups Sounds in Bloom, ChagallPAC, and The Brooklyn Soundpainting Ensemble. Her poetry-music collaboration with Flux Without Pause, “Space Mothlight,” hit #16 on the Creative Commons Hot 100 list in 2015, and can be found in the curated WFMU Free Music Archive. Her work has been recently reviewed by The London Grip and published in VIDA: Reports from the Field, The Fiction Project, Quail Bell Magazine, Lyre Lyre, The Boston Globe, Dr. Hurley’s Snake Oil Cure, The Dudley Review and Up the Staircase QuarterlyThe Million Line Poem, The Cambridge Community Poem, and elsewhere, as well as anthologized in Our Last Walk, The Highwaymen NYC #2, Other Countries: Contemporary Poets Rewiring History, Always Wondering, and Teachers as Writers.  She is currently at work on her next book and an album of poetry & music.  Diana Norma holds a M.A. in French (UCONN, La Sorbonne) and an Ed.M in Arts in Education (Harvard).

ritabanerjee

Rita Banerjee is the Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop and editor of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).   She is the author of the poetry collection Echo in Four Beats (Finishing Line Press, March 2018), which was nominated for the 2019 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize at the Academy of American Poets, featured on the Ruth Stone Foundation podcast, and named one of Book Riot’s “Must-Read Poetic Voices of Split This Rock 2018”, and was selected by Finishing Line Press as their 2018 nominee for the National Book Award in Poetry.  Banerjee is also the author of the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps (Spider Road Press, 2016), and the poetry chapbook Cracklers at Night (Finishing Line Press, 2010).  She is the co-writer and co-director of Burning Down the Louvre (2020), a documentary film about race, intimacy, and tribalism in the United States and in France.  She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington, and she is a recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Artist’s Grant, the Tom and Laurel Nebel Fellowship, and South Asia Initiative and Tata Grants.  Her writing appears in the Academy of American PoetsPoets & Writers, PANK, Nat. Brut.The ScofieldThe Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mass Poetry, Hyphen Magazine, Los Angeles Review of BooksElectric Literature, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, AWP WC&C Quarterly, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Riot Grrrl Magazine, The Fiction Project, Objet d’Art, KBOO Radio’s APA Compass, and elsewhere. She is the Director of the MFA in Writing & Publishing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and an Associate Scholar of Comparative Literature at Harvard.  She is currently working on a novel, a book on South Asian literary modernisms, and a collection of lyric essays on race, sex, politics, and everything cool.  Her writing is represented by agents Jeff Kleinman and Jamie Chambliss of Folio Literary Management.

FAQ:

What Happens After I apply?
Once you apply, you can expect to hear from us within 10-14 days and know whether you were accepted into the program.

What is the process of paying tuition?
Once you are accepted into the program, you will need to pay a 30% tuition deposit to hold your seat within 3-5 days of acceptance. Please note that the deposit is non-refundable. The remainder of tuition will be due by May 30, 2020. Our standard and preferred method of payment is PayPal invoice, which does have a service fee. You can also mail us a check. Please email us if you prefer to send a check and we will give you the mailing address.

What is included in tuition?

    • lodging in central Paris
    • daily breakfast at the hotel
    • creative writing workshops
    • craft of writing seminars
    • a celebratory meet-&-greet dinner with faculty

Where will the program be held?
The program will be held at Hôtel du Midi Paris Montparnasse, 4 Avenue René Coty, 14th Arr., 75014, Paris, France.

What language is the program in?
The program is in English, but French or other non-anglophones are welcome as long as you can speak, read and write in English!

I’m local to Paris. Is there a tuition only option?
Yes. For more information, please inquire at directors@cambridgewritersworkshop.org.

What if the deadline has passed? Can I still apply?
Sometimes, we do have seats open after our deadlines have passed. Please apply or just email us directly at directors@cambridgewritersworkshop.org to check whether there is still availability.

Happy New Year ’20 from the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop!!

From our staff and board at the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop, we’d like to wish you a festive, fun, and very creative New Year 2020!

Let’s make this next decade shine for creativity, art, and new voices in the field!  Thank you to all of the writers, colleagues, artists, and institutions that have supported the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop since 2008!  We’re looking forward to seeing what our second decade brings!

More news regarding accepted authors for Disobedient Futures will be announced in Spring 2020!

The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop will also be at the AWP 2020 Conference in San Antonio, TX from March 4-7, 2020.  Come stop by our AWP Bookfair Table T2164!  We will also be having an off-site reading for AWP 2020 so stay tuned for details about that!  And of course, check our CWW Creative Director Rita Banerjee’s panel “Dismantling the White Imagination: On Intimacy in Creative Nonfiction” on Saturday, March 7 from 9-10:15 am in Room 205, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level (San Antonio, TX).

Finally, we are delighted to announce our instructors for our Spring and Summer 2020 writing retreats.  Our 2020 award-winning faculty includes essayist David Shields, playwright Stephen Aubrey, poet Diana Norma Szokolyai, and poet and essayist Rita Banerjee.  Course registration for our 2020 Spring in New Orleans Writing Retreat (March 19-22) and Summer in Paris Writing Retreat (July 16-21) will be going live on this website and on cww.submittable.com shortly!  So stay tuned!

 

And in the meantime, let’s have an amazing 2020!  Here’s to the return of the “Roaring 20’s” and art that’s not afraid to make the world vibrate just a little bit!

Cheers,
The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop

Celebrating CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing’s Publication Day!

CREDO-RitaBanerjee-DianaNormaSzokolyai

The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is celebrating the publication of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing today!

CREDO (C&R Press, May 15, 2018) is edited by writers and CWW co-directors Rita Banerjee and Diana Norma Szokolyai and assistant editors Alexander Carrigan and Megan Jeanine Tilley. CREDO advocates for the empowerment of female, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized literary voices, with essays and manifestos that cover a wide range of subjects, including transgender poetics, world literature and aesthetics, collage and appropriation, and the politics of place. By presenting a triad of creative writing manifestos, essays on the craft of writing, and creative writing exercises, CREDO bridges the theoretical, political, and aesthetic perspectives on contemporary writing with practical and accessible writing advice. Our incredible CREDO contributing authors are some of the most exciting voices in contemporary poetry, fiction and non-fiction and will leave you feeling inspired.

Meet Our Contributing Authors!

Kazim Ali \ Forrest Anderson \ Rita Banerjee \ Lisa Marie Basile \ Jaswinder Bolina \ Stephanie Burt \ Alexander Carrigan \ Sam Cha \ Melinda J. Combs \ Thade Correa \ Jeff Fearnside \ Ariel Francisco \ John Guzlowski \ Rachael Hanel \ Janine Harrison \ Lindsay Illich \ Douglas Charles Jackson \ Caitlin Johnson \ Christine Johnson-Duell \ Jason Kapcala \ Richard Kenney \ Eva Langston \ John Laue \ Stuart Lishan \ Ellaraine Lockie \ Amy MacLennan \ Kevin McLellan \ E. Ce. Miller \ Brenda Moguez \ Peter Mountford \ Nell Irvin Painter \ Robert Pinsky \ Kara Provost \ Camille Rankine \ Jessica Reidy \ Amy Rutten \ Elisabeth Sharp McKetta \ David Shields \ Lillian Ann Slugocki \ Maya Sonenberg \ Kathleen Spivack \ Laura Steadham Smith \ Molly Sutton Kiefer \ Jade Sylvan \ Anca L. Szilágyi \ Diana Norma Szokolyai \ Marilyn L. Taylor \ Megan Jeanine Tilley \ Suzanne Van Dam \ Nicole Walker \ Allyson Whipple \ Shawn Wong \ Caroll Sun Yang \ Matthew Zapruder

GrolierOn Saturday, June 2, the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop will celebrate the 90th Anniversary of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop at the Grolier Poetry Festival in Harvard Square. CREDO contributing authors Kathleen Spivack, Kevin McLellan and the CWW’s co-director and CREDO editor, Diana Norma Szokolyai will read. Diana Norma Szokolyai will also be teaching a CREDO workshop where copies of CREDO will be available for purchase. Stop by between 1-4 p.m.!

CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing can be purchased through C&R Press, Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Nominate CREDO and the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop for the 2018 Saboteur Awards!

Nominations are now open for the 2018 Saboteur Awards sponsored by Sabotage Reviews!  Voting takes place here: https://form.jotformeu.com/80625273550353

And we encourage our readers and writers to nominate CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing for Best Anthology and the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop for Best Wildcard. Sabotage Reviews was founded in 2010 by Claire Trévien to “provide dynamic commentary and reviews of small-scale and ephemeral literature” with a focus on independent and small presses.

CREDO is edited by writers and CWW co-directors Rita Banerjee and Diana Norma Szokolyai and assistant editors Alexander Carrigan and Megan Jeanine Tilley. CREDO advocates for the empowerment of female, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized literary voices, with essays and manifestos that cover a wide range of subjects, including transgender poetics, world literature and aesthetics, collage and appropriation, and the politics of place. By presenting a triad of creative writing manifestos, essays on the craft of writing, and creative writing exercises, CREDO bridges the theoretical, political, and aesthetic perspectives on contemporary writing with practical and accessible writing advice.

In the manifestos, “One Memoir” and “The Body of a Poem,” we hear from the strong voices of LGBTQ+ icons Jade Sylvan and Stephanie Burt, respectively. Also from the manifestos section, David Shields declares, “I want work that, possessing as thin a membrane as possible between life and art, foregrounds the question of how the writer solves being alive. A book should either allow us to escape existence or teach us how to endure it.” Nell Irvin Painter inspires us and reminds us of the commitment it takes to dedicate our time to creating art. And Matthew Zapruder’s piece “Holding a Paper Clip in the Dark” is exquisite and hopeful, as Zapruder speaks directly to the reader, with an encouraging and inviting tone: “What do I want? I want you (reader) to look at these poems as places that feel to me private to my own experience, yet also common to all of our experiences.”

We feel that CREDO is unique in how it bridges the philosophical with the practical act of writing and also how it gives voice to established and emerging writings speaking from a variety of perspectives. CREDO is a reflection of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop’s desire to foster artistic communities and encourage creative expression in an all-inclusive environment. Since 2008 the CWW has been open to all emerging and established writers in Cambridge, MA and beyond.

Nominations close March 31, 2018! So please vote here: https://form.jotformeu.com/80625273550353  

Thank you so much for your support and being a part of our community!

CREDO Signings at AWP 2018 in Tampa – Editors: Thurs, March 8 * 2-3 pm * Authors: Booth 1036 & Friday, March 9 * 2-4 pm * Table T403

CREDO-RitaBanerjee-DianaNormaSzokolyaiIn celebration of the publication of  CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018) will have signings for both the editors and contributing authors of CREDO!


CREDO Editors
 Rita Banerjee & Diana Norma Szokolyai will be signing copies at the C&R Press Booth (Booth 1036) on Thursday, March 8 between 2-3pm!  For more information see the C&R Press Author signing page here.

CREDO contributing authors will be signing copies at the CWW table, T403 near the left-most entrance, on March 9 between 2-4pm! 

Editor Rita Banerjee will be signing for CREDO and her new poetry collection Echo in Four Beats (Finishing Line Press, March 2018) at the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Table (T403) from 1-2 pm on Friday, March 9, 2018.  She will also be signing for Echo in Four Beats at the Finishing Line Press Table (T743) from 1-2 pm on Saturday, March 10, 2018.

Editor Diana Norma Szokolyai will be signing for CREDO and her poetry collections at the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Table (T403) from 1:30-2:30 pm on Saturday, March 10, 2018.

 

Here’s more about CREDO:

CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing is now available for Pre-Order on the C&R Press Website here and on Amazon.com!  CREDO is edited by Rita Banerjee and Diana Norma Szokolyai and assistant editors Alexander Carrigan and Megan Jeanine Tilley.

CREDO. I believe. No other statement is so full of intent and subversion and power. A Credo is a call to arms. It is a declaration. A Credo is the act of an individual pushing back against society, against established stigmas, taboos, values, and norms. A Credo provokes. It desires change. A Credo is an artist or community challenging dogma, and putting oneself on the front line. A Credo is art at risk. A Credo can be a marker of revolution. A Credo, is thus, the most calculating and simple form of a manifesto.

CREDO creates a bridge from the philosophical to the practical, presenting a triad of creative writing manifestos, essays on the craft of writing, and creative writing exercises. CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing is a raw look at what motivates authors today.

Contributing Authors:

Kazim Ali \ Forrest Anderson \ Rita Banerjee \ Lisa Marie Basile \ Jaswinder Bolina \ Stephanie Burt \ Alexander Carrigan \ Sam Cha \ Melinda J. Combs \ Thade Correa \ Jeff Fearnside \ Ariel Francisco \ John Guzlowski \ Rachael Hanel \ Janine Harrison \ Lindsay Illich \ Douglas Charles Jackson \ Caitlin Johnson \ Christine Johnson-Duell \ Jason Kapcala \ Richard Kenney \ Eva Langston \ John Laue \ Stuart Lishan \ Ellaraine Lockie \ Amy MacLennan \ Kevin McLellan \ E. Ce. Miller \ Brenda Moguez \ Peter Mountford \ Nell Irvin Painter \ Robert Pinsky \ Kara Provost \ Camille Rankine \ Jessica Reidy \ Amy Rutten \ Elisabeth Sharp McKetta \ David Shields \ Lillian Ann Slugocki \ Maya Sonenberg \ Kathleen Spivack \ Laura Steadham Smith \ Molly Sutton Kiefer \ Jade Sylvan \ Anca L. Szilágyi \ Diana Norma Szokolyai \ Marilyn L. Taylor \ Megan Jeanine Tilley \ Suzanne Van Dam \ Nicole Walker \ Allyson Whipple \ Shawn Wong \ Caroll Sun Yang \ Matthew Zapruder

Visit the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Table (T403) at AWP 2018 Bookfair, and learn about CREDOour Spring and Summer 2018 retreats, internships and more!

Meet Our Contributing Authors from CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (May 2018)!

The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is delighted to announce that our new book CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018) is now available for Pre-Order on the C&R Press Website here and on Amazon.comCREDO is edited by Rita Banerjee and Diana Norma Szokolyai and assistant editors Alexander Carrigan and Megan Jeanine Tilley.  To celebrate the release of this book, take a look at the 54 incredible authors who contributed to our anthology, and the title of their featured work in CREDO!

CREDO Contributing Authors:

KazimAliKazim Ali’s books include five volumes of poetry, The Far Mosque, The Fortieth Day, Bright Felon, Sky Ward, the winner of the Ohio Book Award for Poetry in 2014, and All One’s Blue: New and Selected Poems; three novels, Quinn’s Passage, The Disappearance of Seth and Wind Instrument; and three collections of essays, Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art and the Architecture of Silence, Fasting for Ramadan and Resident Alien: On Border-crossing and the Undocumented Divine. He has translated books by Sohrab Sepehri, Ananda Devi and Marguerite Duras. He is an associate professor of Comparative Literature and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Oberlin College as well as the founding editor of the small press Nightboat Books. Ali is the author of “Twelve Workshops and a Void” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Forrest Anderson’s stories have appeared in Blackbird, The Louisville Review, The South Carolina Review, the North Carolina Literary Review, and elsewhere. A graduate of the doctoral creative writing program at Florida State University, where he worked for two years as an archivist and assistant for Robert Olen Butler, he also holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of South Carolina. Currently, he lives in Salisbury, NC and is an associate professor of English at Catawba College. Anderson is the author of “Quiet Mayhem In Fiction: A Writing Exercise” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Rita Banerjee is the author of Echo in Four Beats (Finishing Line Press, February 2018), the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps (Spider Road Press, 2016), and the chapbook Cracklers at Night (Finishing Line Press, 2010). She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard and her MFA from the University of Washington. Her writing appears in the Academy of American Poets, Poets & Writers, Nat. Brut.The ScofieldThe Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mass Poetry, Hyphen Magazine, Los Angeles Review of BooksElectric Literature, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, and elsewhere. She is the Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop, the judge for the 2017 Minerva Rising “Dare to Speak” Poetry Chapbook Contest, and is currently working on a novel, a documentary film about race and intimacy in the United States and in France, and a collection of essays on race, sex, politics, and everything cool.  Banerjee teaches at Ludwig-Maxmilian University of Munich in Germany. Banerjee is author of the essays “CREDO” and “Rasa: Emotion and Suspense in Theatre, Poetry and, (Non)Fiction,” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Lisa Marie Basile is the author of APOCRYPHAL and the chapbooks Andalucia and war/lock. She is the editor-in-chief of Luna Luna Magazine, and her poetry and essays have appeared in PANK, Tin House, Coldfront, The Nervous Breakdown, The Huffington Post, Best American Poetry, PEN American Center, Dusie, The Ampersand Review, and other publications. She’s been featured in the NY Daily News, Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls and on Ravishly.com. She holds an MFA from The New School and is working on a poetic novella. Basile is the author of “Dispelling the Myth of the Poet” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Jaswinder Bolina is author of the poetry collections The 44th of July (2019), Phantom Camera (2012) and Carrier Wave (2006) and the chapbook The Tallest Building in America (2014). His poems have appeared widely in literary journals and in The Best American Poetry series. His essays have appeared at The Poetry Foundation dot orgThe Huffington Post, The Writer, and in several anthologies including the 14th edition of The Norton Reader. Bolina is currently on faculty in the MFA Program at the University of Miami. Bolina is the author of “What I Tell Them” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Stephanie Burt is a poet, literary critic, and professor. In 2012, the New York Times called Burt “one of the most influential poetry critics of her generation.” She grew up around Washington, DC and earned a BA from Harvard and PhD from Yale. Burt has published three collections of poems: Belmont (2013), Parallel Play (2006), and Popular Music (1999). Burt’s works of criticism include Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry (2009), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Art of the Sonnet—written with David Mikics (2010); The Forms of Youth: 20th-Century Poetry and Adolescence (2007); Randall Jarrell on W.H. Auden (2005), with Hannah Brooks-Motl; and Randall Jarrell and His Age (2002). Burt is the author of the essays “The Body of the Poem” and “Like” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, April 2018).

Alexander Carrigan is the Communications and PR manager for the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop and has been with the organization since 2014. He is currently a news copy editor for Rare.us. He has had fiction, poetry, reviews (film, TV, and literature), and nonfiction work published in Poictesme Literary Journal, Amendment Literary Journal, Quail Bell Magazine, Luna Luna Magazine, Rebels: Comic Anthology at VCU, Realms YA Literary Magazine, and Life in 10 Minutes. He lives in Alexandria, VA. Carrigan is the author of “First Person Perspective Flash Fiction Prompts” in the Exercises section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Sam Cha received his MFA from UMass Boston. His work has appeared in apt, Anderbo, Better, decomP, DIAGRAM, Cleaver, Printer’s Devil Review, Memorious, Missouri Review, Rattle, RHINO, and Toad. He’s a poetry editor at Radius and at Off the Coast. He lives and writes in Cambridge, MA. Cha is the author of “Concerning Your Intentions As Poet” the Manifestos section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Melinda J. Combs’melinda combs nonfiction work has appeared in Women’s Best Friend: Women Writers on the Dogs in Their Lives and Far From Home: Father-Daughter Travel Anthology. Her fiction has appeared in Gargoyle, Fiction Southeast and A Cappella Zoo. She also teaches at Orange County School of the Arts in Santa Ana, California, where she listens to her students argue about the merits of magical realism in between their doodling and sighing. Combs is the author of “The Secret and Successful Sentence” in the Craft of Writing section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Thade Correa hails from Northwest Indiana. He received his B.A. from Indiana University, his M.A. from the University of Chicago, and his M.F.A. from the University of Notre Dame. His poetry, translations, and essays have appeared in various venues. Recently, a collection of his work garnered him an Academy of American Poets Prize. A composer and pianist as well as a writer, he currently publishes his music with Alliance Publications. He works as a teacher of both writing and music. Correa is the author of “Manifesto: Aphorisms On Poetry” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, April 2018).

Jeff Fearnside is author of the short-story collection Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air (Stephen F. Austin State University Press). His writing has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, including StoryRosebud, and The Pinch (fiction); The Fourth RiverPermafrost, and The Los Angeles Review (poetry); and New MadridPotomac Review, and The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays(nonfiction). Recipient of a 2015 Individual Artist Fellowship award from the Oregon Arts Commission, he teaches at Oregon State University and is at work on a novel. More info: www.Jeff-Fearnside.com. Fearnside’s essay “Wrighting Rules and Notes” can be found in the Manifesto section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Ariel Francisco is the author of All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017) and Before Snowfall, After Rain (Glass Poetry Press, 2016). Born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents, he completed his MFA at Florida International University in Miami. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Academy of American PoetsThe American Poetry ReviewBest New Poets 2016Gulf CoastWashington Square, and elsewhere. He lives and teaches in South Florida. Francisco’s poems can be found in the Craft of Writing section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

John Guzlowski’s writing appears in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s AlmanacOntario Review, North American ReviewSalonRattleAtticus Review, and many other print and online journals here and abroad.  His first novel Suitcase Charlie, a mystery set among Holocaust survivors in Chicago, is available from Amazon.  His poems and personal essays about his parents’ experiences as slave laborers in Nazi Germany appear in his forthcoming book Echoes of Tattered Tongues (Aquila Polonica Press, March 2016). Of Guzlowski’s writing, Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz said, “He has an astonishing ability for grasping reality.” Guzlowski’s essay, “Advice to Mary Ellen Miller’s Poetry Class,” appears in the Craft of Writing section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook of Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Rachael Hanel is a writer and assistant professor of mass media in Mankato, Minnesota, where she teaches an introductory mass media course and multimedia writing. Her memoir, We’ll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down: Memoir of a Gravedigger¹s Daughter (2013, University of Minnesota Press), was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award. She has written several nonfiction books for children. Her essays have appeared in online and print literary journals such as Bellingham Review and New Delta Review. She is a Ph.D. candidate in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. Hanel’s essay, “Using Visuals To Develop Inner and Outer Stories,” can be found in the Exercises section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Janine Harrison, M.A., M.F.A., poet, nonfictionist, and fiction writer, teaches creative writing at Purdue University Calumet and leads the nonprofit organization, Indiana Writers’ Consortium.  Her work has been published or is forthcoming in A&UVeils, Halos, and Shackles (Kasva Press, 2016); and other publications. She is currently finishing her first poetry collection, The Weight of Silence.  Janine lives with husband, fiction writer Michael Poore, and daughter, Jianna, in NW Indiana. Harrison’s essay, “In Ink: Tattoo Images and Phrases,” appears in the Exercises section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Lindsay Illich is an Associate Professor of English at Curry College in Milton, MA. Her work has appeared or forthcoming in Adirondack Review, Arcadia, Gulf Coast, Hunger Mountain, North American Review, Salamander, and Sundog LitHeteroglossia, a chapbook, is forthcoming from Anchor and Plume in May 2016. Her Twitter handle is @LindsayPenelope. Illich’s is the author of “On Being Lazy, or, What I’m Doing This Summer” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Douglas Charles Jackson lives and writes in Roanoke, Virginia, where he’s exploring the intersections between books and place through BOOK CITY ★ Roanoke. His stories have been acknowledged with the Tennessee Writers Alliance Short Fiction Award, the James Andrew Purdy Award for Fiction, and the Bay to Ocean Fiction Award. Professionally, Doug coaches rural communities in downtown revitalization strategies, and he reports that, just like when he was at the head of the table in a workshop setting, he learns far more from the individuals and teams he’s working with than he ever passes on to them. He’s a graduate of Duke, UC Irvine, and the creative writing program at Hollins University. Jackson is the author of “Create the World” found in the Manifestos section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Caitlin Johnson holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Lesley University. She is the author of two chapbooks: Miles (St. Andrews College Press, 2008) and Boomerang Girl (Tiger’s Eye Press, 2015). Her first full-length poetry collection, Gods in the Wilderness (Pink.Girl.Ink. Press), is forthcoming. Johnson is the author of “The First Four Steps” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Christine Johnson-Duell is the author of the poetry chapbook, Italian Lessons. Her poetry has appeared in Poet LoreCALYX,The Floating Bridge ReviewThe Far FieldAlimentum, The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, Drash, and Parent Map. She is a Hedgebrook alumna and contributes to its community blog, The Farmhouse Table. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. A New Englander by birth, Johnson-Duell now lives in Seattle with her husband and their teenage daughter. Johnson-Duell’s essay, “Poet, Try” can be found in the Manifestos section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Jason Kapcala lives in northern West Virginia along the Monongahela River where he finds inspiration in the frozen industry of Appalachia. His fiction and nonfiction has appeared in a number of magazines and journals, and he is the author of North to Lakeville, a collection of short stories published by Urban Farmhouse Press. He is currently writing a novel about a rock band from central Pennsylvania. His website is www.jasonkapcala.com Kapcala’s essay, “The Art of Breaking Hearts: Why I Write Fiction,” appears in the Craft of Writing section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Richard Kenney’s most recent book, The One-Strand River, was published by Knopf in 2007. He teaches at the University of Washington in Seattle, and at the Friday Harbor Laboratories on San Juan Island. He lives with his family in Port Townsend. Kenney is the author of “Plans” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Eva Langston received her MFA in 2009 from the University of New Orleans, and her work has been published in many journals and anthologies, including Compose Journal, where she later became the Features Editor. She once won third place in a Playboy Magazine fiction contest, and her fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In 2015 she was a San Miguel Literary Sala Writer-in-Residence, and for the past two years she has been an instructor at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. A former high school math teacher, she now writes novels for teens and tweens. She lives in the D.C. area with her physicist husband and their young daughter. Follow her on Twitter at @eva_langston, or visit her blog at www.evalangston.com. Langston’s essay, “The Story Of My Creative Writing Career,” can be found in the Craft of Writing section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

John Laue, a former teacher, counselor, editor of Transfer and Associate Editor of San Francisco Review, has won awards for poetry and prose, beginning with The Ina Coolbrith Poetry Prize at The University of California, Berkeley. With six published books to his credit, he presently coordinates the reading series of The Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium and edits the online magazine Monterey Poetry Review. In addition to his writing he is a mental health activist, a member and former Co-Chair of the Santa Cruz County California Mental Health Board. Laue is the author of “Little Magazines” and “An Unknown Poet’s Manifesto” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

S.D. Lishan is an Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University. His book of poetry, Body Tapestries (Dream Horse Press), was awarded the Orphic Prize in Poetry. His poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared numerous journals such as Arts & Letters, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Phoebe, Measure, Boulevard, Bellingham Review, Barrow Street, Your Impossible Voice, Brevity, and Creative Nonfiction. Lishan’s essay, “Listening To Winter,” appears in the Exercises section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Ellaraine Lockie is a widely published and awarded poet, nonfiction book author and essayist. Her thirteenth chapbook, Tripping with the Top Down, was recently released from FootHills Publishing and has been selected as one of Winning Writers’ Favorite Books from 2017. Earlier collections have won the Encircle Publications Chapbook Contest, the Poetry Forum Press Chapbook Contest Prize, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival Chapbook Contest, the Aurorean Chapbook Choice Award and Best Individual Collection Award from Purple Patch magazine in England. Ellaraine teaches poetry workshops and serves as Poetry Editor for the lifestyles magazine, Lilipoh. Lockie is the author of “How To Pirate A Treasure Chest” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Amy MacLennan has been published in Hayden’s Ferry Review, River Styx, Linebreak, Cimarron Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Folio, and Rattle. Her chapbook, The Fragile Day, was released from Spire Press in the summer of 2011, and her chapbook, Weathering, was published by Uttered Chaos Press in early 2012. She has a poem appearing in the anthology Myrrh, Mothwing, Smoke that was published by Tupelo Press in March 2013. Amy’s first full-length collection, The Body, A Tree, was released from MoonPath Press in early 2016. She lives in Ashland, OR. MacLennan is the author of “Ars Poetica Schmetica” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Kevin McLellan is the author of Ornitheology (The Word Works, 2018), Hemispheres (Fact-Simile Editions, 2018), [box] (Letter [r] Press, 2016), Tributary (Barrow Street, 2015), and Round Trip (Seven Kitchens, 2010). He won the 2015 Third Coast Poetry Prize and Gival Press’ 2016 Oscar Wilde Award, and his poems appear in numerous literary journals. Kevin lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. McLellan’s essay, “Attributes: A Prompt,” can be found in the Exercises section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

E. Ce Miller is a writer, reader, activist, feminist, and yoga instructor. Currently she writes about books for Bustle magazine, and has been a writing mentor for the PEN America Prison Writing Program and the Afghan Women’s Writing Project. Her words have appeared in Culture Trip, Midwestern Gothic, Sixfold Journal, The Sun Magazine, and more. Miller is the author of “Why I Writing” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Brenda Moguez writes the kind of stories she loves to read– fiction, starring quirky, passionate women who are challenged by the fickleness and the complexities of life. She’s particularly drawn to exploring the effects of love on the heart of a woman. Her forte is stripping away the protective layers concealing their doubts and insecurities and exposing the soul of her beautifully flawed characters. She has aspirations for a fully staffed villa in Barcelona and funding aplenty for a room of her own. When she’s not working on a story, she writes love letters to the universe, dead poets, and Mae West. Moguez is the author of the essay, “Writer Wanted,” in the Manifestos section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Peter Mountford is the author of the novels A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism (winner of the 2012 Washington State Book Award in fiction), and The Dismal Science (a NYT editor’s choice). His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Missouri Review, The Atlantic, The Sun, and elsewhere. He’s currently on faculty at Sierra Nevada College’s MFA program, and is the events curator at Hugo House, Seattle’s writing center. Mountford’s “Calling Bullshit On A Writer’s Top 10 Excuses For Not Writing” can be found in the Craft of Writing section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Nell Irvin Painter is the Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, at Princeton University and author of several books including Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol, The History of White People, and Standing at Armageddon: The United States: 1877-1919. In additiona to a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University, she holds a BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, both in painting. Her art school memoir is entitled Old In Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over. Painter’s essays, “Leaving My Former Life” and “You’ll Never Be A Painter!” appear in the Manifesto section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Robert Pinsky went to college at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and went on to graduate work at Stanford, where he held a Stegner Fellowship. His Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux) was published in 2011 and his newest book of poems is At The Foundling Hospital (2016). His previous books of poetry include Gulf Music (2008), Jersey Rain (2000), The Want Bone (1990, and The Figured Wheel: New And Collected Poems, 1966-1996. His translation of The Inferno of Dante (1994) was a Book-of-the-Month Club Editor’s Choice, and received both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. His prose books include The Life of David (2005), The Situation of Poetry (1976) and The Sounds of Poetry (1998). AMong his awards and honors are the William Carlos Williams Prize, the Harold Washington Award from the City of Chicago, the Italian Premio Capri, the PEN-Volcker Award, the Korean Manhae Prize, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the PEN American Center. Robert Pinsky founded The Favorite Poem Project, including videos that can be seen at http://www.favoritepoem.org, while serving an unprecedented three terms as United States Poet Laureate. Pinsky is the author of “The Frontier of Poetry” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Kara Provost has published two chapbooks, Topless (Main Street Rag, 2011) and Nests (Finishing Line Press, 2006), as well as six microchapbooks with the Origami Poems project (origamipoems.com). Her poems have appeared in the Connecticut Review, Main Street Rag, The Newport Review, Ibbetson Street, The Aurorean, and other journals, as well as in The Loft Anthology: 2012 Poetry Awards and In Praise of Pedagogy: Poetry, Flash Fiction, and Essays on Composing, edited by David Starkey and Wendy Bishop. She teaches writing at Curry College in addition to conducting creative writing workshops for elementary students through adults. Currently, she is working on a full-length poetry manuscript as well as a chapbook combining visual design with poems based on the letters of the alphabet. She now lives near Providence, RI with her husband and two daughters. Provost is the author of “DIY Writing Retreats: Nurturing Yourself and Your Writing Community” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Camille Rankine is the daughter of Jamaican immigrants. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Incorrect Merciful Impulses, was published in 2016 by Copper Canyon Press. She is also the author of the chapbook Slow Dance With Trip Wire, selected by Cornelius Eady for the Poetry Society of America’s 2010 New York Chapbook Fellowship. The recipient of a 2010 “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, she was featured as an emerging poet in the April 2011 issue of O, The Oprah Winfrey Magazine and as one of Brooklyn Magazine’s top 100 cultural influencers of 2017. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including, The Baffler, Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Narrative, Octopus Magazine, A Public Space, The New York Times, and Tin House. She serves on the Executive Committee of VIDA: Women In Literary Arts, chairs the Board of Trustees of The Poetry Project, and co-chairs the Brooklyn Book Festival Poetry Committee. She lives in New York City.  Her poem, “Symptoms of Prophesy” appears in the Craft of Writing section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Jessica Reidy has an M.F.A. from Florida State University and a B.A. from Hollins University. Her work is nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net, and appeared in Narrative Magazine as Story of the Week, The Los Angeles Review, The Missouri Review, and other journals. She’s Managing Editor for VIDA, Art Editor for The Southeast Review, and a writing instructor for the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. Jessica is writing her first novel set in post-WWII Paris about Coco Charbonneau, the Romani burlesque dancer and fortune teller of Zenith Circus, who becomes a Nazi hunter. Reidy’s essay, “Ritual and the Symbiotic Magic of Yoga and Writing” appears in the Craft of Writing section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Amy Rutten has been writing seriously for the past five years, augmenting a 20-year career in architecture. She works for the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and runs a vacation rental in Nevada City, California. She has published several short pieces in small publications and newspapers, and is just completing her first novel. Rutten is the author of “Damn the Apostrophe” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta is the author of the biography Energy (Univ. Texas Press, 2017) as well as several previous books, including a writing guide. Her poetry and prose have been published in over 50 literary journals around the United States, including Mid-American Review, Raintown Review, and The Coachella Review. She teaches writing for Harvard Extension School. Sharp McKetta’s essay, “How To Be A Writer,” can be found in the Manifestos section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

David Shields is the internationally bestselling author of twenty books, including Reality Hunger (named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (New York Times bestseller), Black Planet (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), War is Beautiful (Powerhouse) and Other People (Knopf). The recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, Shields has published essays and stories in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Esquire, Yale Review, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney’s, and Believer. His work has been translated into twenty languages. Shields is the author of “Collage and Appropriation” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Lillian Ann Slugocki has created a body of work on women and sexuality for print and for the stage including; The Public Theater, HERE, Circle Rep, Labyrinth Theater, National Public Radio, and WBAI. Her work has been published by Seal Press, Cleis Press, Heinemann Press, Newtown Press, Spuyten Duyvil Press, and Salon, Bloom/The Millions, Beatrice, HerKind/Vida, Deep Water Literary Journal, Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review, Non-Binary Review, and The Nervous Breakdown.  Her novella, How to Travel with Your Demons, was published by Spuyten Duyvil Press in 2015. Slugocki’s essay, “Treat Your First Draft Like A One Night Stand,” appears in the Manifestos section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Maya Sonenberg is the author of the story collections Cartographies (winner of the Drue Heinz Prize for Literature) and Voices from the Blue Hotel26 Abductions, a chapbook of her prose and drawings was published in 2015 by The Cupboard, and her newest chapbook of prose and photographs, After the Death of Shostakovich Père, won the PANK [Chap]book contest and will appear in 2018. Other fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Fairy Tale Review, Web Conjunctions, DIAGRAM, New Ohio Review, The Literarian, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Hotel Amerika, and numerous other journals, both in print and online. Her writing has received grants from the Washington State Arts Commission and King County 4Culture. She teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Washington. Sonenberg is the author of “Beyond The Plot Triangle” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Kathleen Spivack’s novel Unspeakable Things was released by Knopf in early 2016. Her previous book, the memoir With Robert Lowell and His Circle: Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz and Others was published by the University Press of New England in 2012. Her chapbook, A History of Yearning, won the Sows Ear International Poetry Chapbook Prize in 2010, and she recently received the Allen Ginsberg, Erika Mumford, and Paumanok awards for her poetry. Her book won the New England Book Festival and London Book Festival Prizes. Published in over 400 magazines and anthologies, Kathleen’s work has been translated into French. She has held grants from the National Endowment for the Arts; Massachusetts Artists Foundation; Bunting Institute; Howard Foundation; Massachusetts Council for the Arts and Humanities; is a Discovery winner and has been at Yaddo, MacDowell, Ragdale, Karolyi, and the American Academy in Rome. In Boston and Paris she directs the Advanced Writing Workshop, an intensive training program for professional writers. She has taught at conferences in Paris, Aspen, Santa Fe, Burgundy, Skidmore, and on the high seas, (Holland American Line). Spivak is the author of the Craft of Writing essays, “The Writing Exercise: A Recipe” and “Words As Inspiration” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Laura Steadham Smith’s work has appeared in the Gettysburg Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Post Road, and other magazines. She is the recipient of the Hamlin Garland Fiction Award and an AWP Intro Journals Prize. She currently lives and writes in Louisiana. Steadham Smith is the author of “Where Stories Come From” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Molly Sutton Kiefer is the author of the full-length lyric essay Nestuary (2014) as well as three chapbooks of poetry, including Thimbleweed. Her work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Rumpus, PANK, Fiddlehead Review, Women’s Studies Review, and Harpur Palate, among others. She is co-founding editor of Tinderbox Poetry Journal and publisher of Tinderbox Editions. Sutton Kiefer is the author of “The Gloaming” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Jade Sylvancalled a “risque queer icon, by the Boston Globe, is an award-winning author, poet, screenwriter and performer heavily rooted in the literary and performance community of Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts. Jade’s most recent book, Kissing Oscar Wilde (Write Bloody 2013), novelized memoir about the author’s experiences as a touring poet in Paris, received rave reviews and was a finalist for the New England Book Award and the Bisexual Book Award. Jade is now working on a bunch of slutty science fiction. Sylvan is the author of “On Memoir” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Anca L. Szilágyi’s debut novel is Daughters of the Air. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming from Los Angeles Review of BooksElectric Literature, and Lilith Magazine, among other publications. She is the recipient of the inaugural Artist Trust / Gar LaSalle Storyteller Award, a Made at Hugo House fellowship, and awards from the Vermont Studio Center, 4Culture, the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, and the Jack Straw Cultural Center. The Stranger hailed Anca as one of the “fresh new faces in Seattle fiction.” Originally from Brooklyn, she currently lives in Seattle with her husband. Find her on Twitter @ancawrites. Szilagyi is the author of “Summer-Inspired Writing Prompts,” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

DianVersion 2a Norma Szokolyai is author of Parallel Sparrows (honorable mention for Best Poetry Book, 2014 Paris Book Festival), Roses in the Snow (first runner­up, Best Poetry Book, 2009 DIY Book Festival), and a feminist rewriting of a classic fairytale for Brooklyn Art Library’s The Fiction Project, entitled Beneath the Surface: Blue Beard, Remixed. Szokolyai’s poetry and prose has been published in MER VOX Quarterly, VIDA Review, Quail Bell Magazine, The Boston Globe, Luna Luna Magazine, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and has been anthologized in Other Countries: Contemporary Poets Rewiring History, Teachers as Writers & elsewhere. Her edited volume is CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos & Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, 2018). She’s founding Executive Artistic Director of Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. Szokolyai is author of Introduction, and the essay “What’s At Stake?” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Marilyn L. Taylor, former Poet Laureate of the state of Wisconsin (2009 and 2010) and the city of Milwaukee (2004 and 2005), is the author of six poetry collections.  Her award-winning poems and essays have appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Poetry, The American Scholar, Able Muse, Measure, and in the Random House anthology titled Villanelles. Marilyn also served for five years as Contributing Editor and regular poetry columnist for The Writer magazine. She recently moved from Milwaukee to Madison, Wisconsin, where she continues to write and teach. Taylor is the author of “The Poetry of Protest: A Dozen Pitfalls To Avoid” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Megan Jeanine Tilley haunts the panhandle of Florida, where she received her BA in Creative Writing, and is currently working on an MA in Literature at Florida State University. She has had several poems and short fictions published in online journals such as Fiction Vale, Wiley Writers, Quail Bell Magazine and The Rectangle. Her short story ‘Flowering’ won Best Fiction and Best Overall from The Rectangle. Outside of writing, Megan is an avid collector of small cacti and biscuit recipes. Tilley is the author of “Manifesto” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Suzanne Van Dam loves the green and the wild, and finds plenty of it in the place she calls home, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  She is a writer for Little Brothers–Friends of the Elderly, an organization committed to reducing loneliness and isolation among the elderly.  She also teaches creative writing, environmental studies, and English as a second language.  She has an MFA from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Creative Writing Program and recently completed her first novel, Camp Redemption.  She writes frequently about the environment on themes ranging from frogs to snowshoeing, and from climate change to the precarious fate of bats in the wake of a deadly fungus that is wreaking havoc on bat populations throughout North America.  One of her favorite pastimes is tagging along with scientists in the field and interpreting their scientific knowledge and intellectual passion for a lay audience.   Her work has appeared in numerous environmental newsletters, along with Traverse Magazine, Further North, The U.P. Environment, Ceramics Monthy, and Running Times, among other publications. Van Dam is the author of the writing exercise, “Writing On Location: Nature Writing Prompt,” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Nicole Walker is the author of two forthcoming books Sustainability: A Love Story and Love in the Ruins: A Survival Guide for Life after NormalHer previous books include Where the Tiny Things Are: Feathered Essays, EggMicrograms, Quench Your Thirst with Salt, and This Noisy Egg. She also edited Bending Genre with Margot Singer. She’s nonfiction editor at Diagram and Associate Professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona where it rains like the Pacific Northwest, but only in July. Walker is the author of the essay “On Constancy” found in the Craft of Writing section in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Allyson Whipple has an MA in English and a black belt in Kung Fu. She is currently pursuing her MFA through the University of Texas at El Paso. Allyson is the author of the chapbook We’re Smaller Than We Think We Are, as well as co-editor of the 2016 Texas Poetry Calendar. She teaches at Austin Community College. Whipple is the author of “Deep Breaths and Small Stones: Haiku As A Tool For Writers Block” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Shawn Wong is the author of two prize-winning novels, Homebase and American Knees, and editor/co-editor of six Asian American and American multicultural literary anthologies including the pioneering anthology Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers’s second novel, American Knees.  The film version of American Knees, titled “Americanese” won several film festival awards in 2006.  Wong was featured in the Bill Moyers’ PBS documentary, “Becoming American: The Chinese Experience,” in 2003.  He is currently Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Cinema and Media at the University of Washington. Wong’s essay, “The Craft Of Travel Writing,” appears in the Exercises section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Caroll Sun Yang earned her BFA at Art Center College of Design, an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and holds certification as a Psychosocial Rehabilitation Specialist. Her work appears in The Nervous Breakdown, New World Writing, The Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeney’s IT, Necessary Fiction, Word Riot, Columbia Journal, Diagram and Juked. She is the Associate Editor for The Unseasonal. She survives in Highland Park, Ca with her family of four and yearns for more personality-disordered friends/ lo-fi anything/ sarcasm/ art films featuring teens/ Latrinalia/ frosting flowers/ bio changes.  She spews forth as Caroll Sun Yang on Facebook/ IG – www.carollsunyang.com. Sun Yang is the author of “Navels Are Natural” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Matthew Zapruder is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Come On All You Ghosts, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Sun Bear (Copper Canyon 2014). Why Poetry, a book of prose, was published by Ecco Press in 2017. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a William Carlos Williams Award, a May Sarton Award from the Academy of American Arts and Sciences, and a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship in Marfa, TX. An Associate Professor in the St. Mary’s College of California MFA program and English Department, he is also Editor at Large at Wave Books. He lives in Oakland, CA. Zapruder is the author of “Holding A Paper Clip In The Dark” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Pre-Order CREDO on the C&R Press website here or on Amazon.com! If you are attending the AWP 2018 Conference in Tampa, FL from March 7-11, you can also pick up a copy at the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop’s AWP Table (T403).

CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing Now Available for Pre-Order at C&R Press!

We are delighted to announce the incredible and empowering cover design of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).  The cover illustration has been designed by Eugenia Loli, and the anthology which is edited by writers Rita Banerjee and Diana Norma Szokolyai and assistant editors Alexander Carrigan and Megan Jeanine Tilley is now available for Pre-Order on the C&R Press Website here and on Amazon.com!

Here is some information about the anthology:

CREDO. I believe. No other statement is so full of intent and subversion and power. A Credo is a call to arms. It is a declaration. A Credo is the act of an individual pushing back against society, against established stigmas, taboos, values, and norms. A Credo provokes. It desires change. A Credo is an artist or community challenging dogma, and putting oneself on the front line. A Credo is art at risk. A Credo can be a marker of revolution. A Credo, is thus, the most calculating and simple form of a manifesto.

CREDO creates a bridge from the philosophical to the practical, presenting a triad of creative writing manifestos, essays on the craft of writing, and creative writing exercises. CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing is a raw look at what motivates authors today.

Contributing Authors:

Kazim Ali \ Forrest Anderson \ Rita Banerjee \ Lisa Marie Basile \ Jaswinder Bolina \ Stephanie Burt \ Alexander Carrigan \ Sam Cha \ Melinda J. Combs \ Thade Correa \ Jeff Fearnside \ Ariel Francisco \ John Guzlowski \ Rachael Hanel \ Janine Harrison \ Lindsay Illich \ Douglas Charles Jackson \ Caitlin Johnson \ Christine Johnson-Duell \ Jason Kapcala \ Richard Kenney \ Eva Langston \ John Laue \ Stuart Lishan \ Ellaraine Lockie \ Amy MacLennan \ Kevin McLellan \ E. Ce. Miller \ Brenda Moguez \ Peter Mountford \ Nell Irvin Painter \ Robert Pinsky \ Kara Provost \ Camille Rankine \ Jessica Reidy \ Amy Rutten \ Elisabeth Sharp McKetta \ David Shields \ Lillian Ann Slugocki \ Maya Sonenberg \ Kathleen Spivack \ Laura Steadham Smith \ Molly Sutton Kiefer \ Jade Sylvan \ Anca L. Szilágyi \ Diana Norma Szokolyai \ Marilyn L. Taylor \ Megan Jeanine Tilley \ Suzanne Van Dam \ Nicole Walker \ Allyson Whipple \ Shawn Wong \ Caroll Sun Yang \ Matthew Zapruder

Editors:

ritabanerjeeRita Banerjee is the Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop and editor of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).  She is the author of the poetry collection Echo in Four Beats (Finishing Line Press, March 2018), which was a finalist for the Red Hen Press Benjamin Saltman Award, Three Mile Harbor Poetry Prize, and Aquarius Press / Willow Books Literature Award, the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps (Spider Road Press, 2016), and the poetry chapbook Cracklers at Night (Finishing Line Press, 2010). She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington, and her writing appears in the Academy of American PoetsPoets & Writers, Nat. Brut.The ScofieldThe Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mass Poetry, Hyphen Magazine, Los Angeles Review of BooksElectric Literature, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, AWP WC&C Quarterly, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Riot Grrrl Magazine, The Fiction Project, Objet d’Art, KBOO Radio’s APA Compass, and elsewhere.  She is an Associate Scholar of Comparative Literature at Harvard and teaches at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany.  She is the judge for the 2017 Minerva Rising “Dare to Speak” Poetry Chapbook Contest, and she is currently working on a novel, a documentary film about race and intimacy, a book on South Asian literary modernisms, and a collection of lyric essays on race, sex, politics, and everything cool.

Headshot.McCarrenPark,WillamsburgDiana Norma Szokolyai is a writer and Executive Artistic Director of Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. Her edited volume,CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing , will be released by C&R Press in May 2018.  She is author of the poetry collections Parallel Sparrows (honorable mention for Best Poetry Book in the 2014 Paris Book Festival) and Roses in the Snow (first runner-­up Best Poetry Book at the 2009 DIY Book Festival). She also records her poetry with musicians and has collaborated with several composers including David Krebs (US), Robert Lemay (Canada), Claudio Gabriele (Italy), Peter James (UK), Jason Haye (UK), and Sebastian Wesman (Estonia). Diana Norma is a founding member of the performing arts groups Sounds in Bloom, ChagallPAC, and The Brooklyn Soundpainting Ensemble.  Her poetry-music collaboration with Flux Without Pause, “Space Mothlight,” hit #16 on the Creative Commons Hot 100 list in 2015, and can be found in the curated WFMU Free Music Archive. Her work has been recently reviewed by The London Grip and published in VIDA: Reports from the Field, The Fiction Project, Quail Bell Magazine, Lyre Lyre, The Boston Globe, Dr. Hurley’s Snake Oil Cure, The Dudley Review and Up the Staircase QuarterlyThe Million Line Poem, The Cambridge Community Poem, and elsewhere, as well as anthologized in Our Last Walk, The Highwaymen NYC #2, Other Countries: Contemporary Poets Rewiring History, Always Wondering, and Teachers as Writers.  She is currently at work on her next book and an album of poetry & music.  Diana Norma holds a M.A. in French (UCONN, La Sorbonne) and an Ed.M in Arts in Education (Harvard).  Diana Norma Szokolyai is represented by Nat Kimber (The Rights Factory).

Assistant Editors:

Alexander Carrigan is the Communications and PR manager for the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop and has been with the organization since 2014. He is currently a news copy editor for Rare.us. He has had fiction, poetry, reviews (film, TV, and literature), and nonfiction work published in Poictesme Literary Journal, Amendment Literary Journal, Quail Bell Magazine, Luna Luna Magazine, Rebels: Comic Anthology at VCU, Realms YA Literary Magazine, and Life in 10 Minutes. He lives in Alexandria, VA. Carrigan is the author of “First Person Perspective Flash Fiction Prompts” in the Exercises section of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018).

Megan Jeanine Tilley haunts the panhandle of Florida, where she received her BA in Creative Writing, and is currently working on an MA in Literature at Florida State University. She has had several poems and short fictions published in online journals such as Fiction Vale, Wiley Writers, Quail Bell Magazine and The Rectangle. Her short story ‘Flowering’ won Best Fiction and Best Overall from The Rectangle. Outside of writing, Megan is an avid collector of small cacti and biscuit recipes. Tilley is the author of “Manifesto” in CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing  (C&R Press, May 2018).

Pre-Order CREDO on the C&R Press website here or on Amazon.com!

 

Happy New Year 2018 -💖- the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop!

Happy New Year 2018 from all of us here at the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop! We are looking forward to another year filled with inspiring workshops and retreats, readings and book launches and a variety of other ways to connect with new and old CWW writers and artists. Thank you to all of our CWW participants, teachers, friends and all of you who helped make this year creatively productive and inspiring.

2017 was a wild ride but looking back on the events of the past year we are overwhelmingly grateful for the ways we were able to connect with new and old friends through writing and art. Over the past year CWW held retreats and workshops in Europe and the United States, put the finishing touches on our anthology that is being published in 2018, and connected with other writers at readings and events throughout the country. We started the year off at the AWP Conference in Washington, DC where we hosted “Writers In Resistance.” Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, Emily Nemens, Jensen Beach, Tim Horvath, Rita Banerjee, Diana Norma Szokolyai, Alex Carrigan and Anna-Celestrya Carr read their original work at Upshur Street Books and it was a wonderful night of reading and community.

In March we held our Spring In New Orleans Writing Retreat where Dipika Guha, Emily Nemens, Rita Banerjee, and Diana Norma Szokolyai led workshops on character development, storytelling and writing in the lyric register. We produced new work, shared our goals and expanded our writing community with new friend and new teachers. Because we were there during the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival, participants were able to take advantage of literary New Orleans in a very special way. We had such a wonderful time in New Orleans we’re doing it again! Stay tuned for details on our Spring 2018 New Orleans Writing Retreat.

From New Orleans it was on to our Spring in Portland Writing Retreat in April. Adam Reid Sexton, Kerry Cohen, Rita Banerjee, and Diana Norma Szokolyai led workshops in fiction, non-fiction and poetry. We held sessions at the Secret Library in the historic Heathman Hotel, spent an afternoon exploring the famous Powell’s bookstore and attended a reading by local author Paul Dage. In our short weekend, we managed to get a feel for this amazing city and can’t wait to go back. Check out CWW alum Angie Walls Portland recommendations!

For our next retreat we headed abroad to Granada, Spain in the Andalucia region. Tim HorvathAlexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, Rita Banerjee and Diana Norma Szokolyai led workshops on character development, poetry, memoir, writing from the senses and translation. We enjoyed flamenco performances, visited the Roma caves of Sacromonte, enjoyed the delicious food and drink the region had to offer. It was a magical trip and we can’t wait to go back this August. Details coming soon! To get taste of what a CWW writing retreat is like check out Diana Norma Szokolyai’s poetic musings on the Granada 2017 retreat.

Our Harvest Creative Writing Retreat in Rockport, MA was our final writing retreat of 2017. We stayed in Gloucester, MA right by beautiful Wingaersheek Beach and took full advantage of our settings. When we weren’t in workshops led by Maya Sonenberg, Rita Banerjee, and Diana Norma Szokolyai, we were taking walks on the beach, enjoying the Rockport Harvest Festival and visiting nearby Salem to take advantage of their October Haunted Happenings. We are planning another New England retreat for 2018, but in the meantime, enjoy Alex Carrigan’s Rockport columns to get a sense of this fantastic weekend.

In addition to our retreats we hosted readings and performances in Boston and Cambridge throughout the year. Some of our readers and performers who joined us throughout the year were Fawn (Will Johnson and Anna Malin Ringwalt) Neil Sanzgiri, Audrey Harrer, Janaka Stucky, Matthew Wallenstein, Rita Banerjee, Sounds in Bloom (Diana Norma Szokolyai and Dennis Shafer), Erini S. Katopodis and Elizabeth Devlin. We also were excited to host our second annual fall writing series at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. Janaka Stucky, Megan Fernandes, Frederick Douglas Knowles II and Diana Norma Szokolyai taught workshops on haiku, poetry in the age of terror, the power of hip-hop, writing in the lyric register, Black Mountain and New York Poetry School and how to craft compelling characters.

2017 was also the year we began production on our forthcoming podcast, Contact Zones, a series of interviews featuring artists from all mediums all over the world sharing their artistic process and how they related to the world in order to explore how art reverberates after its creation. Our media interns, Anna-Celestrya Carr and Shannon O. Sawyer, are readying the first season of Contact Zones, and we can’t wait to share it will you.

And in between all of the retreats, classes, readings and performances we were writing, editing and dreaming about CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing. CREDO comes out in March 2018 and we could not be more excited to share it with you! But we didn’t do it alone. Our agent, Natalie Kimber, at The Rights Factory, and our publishers John Gosslee and Andrew Sullivan at C&R Press deserve huge thanks! As do our writers! Kazim Ali, Forrest Anderson, Rita Banerjee, Lisa-Marie Basile, Jaswinder Bolina, Stephanie Burt, Alex Carrigan, Sam Cha, Melinda Combs, Thade Correa, Jeff Fernside, Ariel Francisco, John Guzlowski, Rachel Hanel, Janine Harrison, Lindsay Illich, Douglas Jackson, Christine Johnson-Duell, Caitlin Johnson, Jason Kapcala, Richard Kenney, Eve Langston, John Laue, S.D. Lishan, Ellaraine Lockie, Amy MacLennan, Kevin McLellan, E. Ce. Miller, Brenda Moguez, Peter Mountford, Nell Irvin Painter, Robert Pinsky, Kara Provost, Camille Rankine, Jessica Reidy, Amy Rutten, Elizabeth Sharp McKetta, David Shields, Lillian Slugocki, Maya Sonenberg, Kathleen Spivack, Laura Steadham Smith, Molly Sutton Kiefer, Jade Sylvan, Anca, Szilagyi, Diana Norma Szokolyai, Marilyn Taylor, Megan Tilley, Suzanne Van Dam, Nicole Walker, Allyson Whipple, Shawn Wong, Caroll Sun Yang, Matthew Zapruder contributed the beautiful, thought-provoking pieces that make up CREDO and we are so grateful. Stay tuned for details about our CREDO book launch event in March 2018 in conjunction with the AWP conference in Tampa, FL. If you’ll be at AWP stop by and say hi!

Be sure to stick with us in 2018 for another year of incredible writing retreats in New Orleans, Paris, and Granada, Spain, fantastic readings, and a whole slew of exciting projects to come from the CWW and our friends and associates. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates on our forthcoming retreats, workshops and readings and feel free to email us with any questions at info@cambridgewritersworkshop.org. We’d love to hear from you!

May you all have a happy, peaceful and creative 2018!
Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Directors, Board, & Staff