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!

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

Diana Norma Szokolyai Poetry Performances & Workshop at CROSSING WATER FESTIVAL 9/10 – 9/15 2019

 

As CWW Artistic Director, I’m thrilled to be a part of the Crossing Water Festival, an interdisciplinary arts festival in and around the Beverly/Salem Bridge in Massachusetts. The arts festival features visual art, literary arts, music, dance, video projection art, & more.

Tuesday, September 10th at 7 p.m   Improbable Poetry Tour

 Salem Side of Bridge on the pier of Remond Park, 1 Bridge Street, Salem MA. 01970

Thanks to Colleen Michaels for inviting me to read along with other poets. The reading begins promptly at 7:00 pm with a performance of Lucille Clifton’s “Blessing the Boats” featuring poet Krysten Hill and choreographer Betsy Miller. Each poet will read a poem written about the theme: bridges. As we read, dancers will dance across the bridge in the background.

This is going to be visually sublime, and I cannot wait. I was out on the pier tonight, and the smell of the water and the sight of the sailboats against the pink sky while Dennis played with his jazz band was breathtakingly beautiful.

The following Events are all held on the Beverly Side of the bridge near the Harbormaster’s station. As you cross the bridge from Salem to Beverly, it’s on the right.

Friday, September 13th 8 p.m. Poetry-Music-Video Projection Installation & FILM SCREENING OF THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI

Beverly Side of Bridge, Beverly Harbormaster 11 Cabot St, Beverly, MA 01915

My poem “Space Mothlight” will be projected onto a 17 ft. pyramid opening before the film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is screened onto the pyramid, with a live film score!

Facebook Event 

Saturday September 14th at 3-5 p.m. MINDFULNESS WRITING WORKSHOP under the Pyramid (Free and open to all)
Beverly Side of Bridge, Beverly Harbormaster 11 Cabot St, Beverly, MA 01915

All Genres and Levels Welcome! We will be writing underneath the pyramid, working under a full moon, with the soothing water next to us. Come experiment with mindfulness exercises that will open up your creativity channels. Come with a writing utensil and your favorite notebook, but if you don’t have these, I’ll have writing materials.

Later on Saturday, in the same place, under the pyramid installation, I’ll perform my poetry in the following musical acts:

6-8 p.m. HOWL QUARTET (Experimental Contemporary Ensemble)

Performance Poet Diana Norma Szokolyai (Salem)

Saxophonist Etienne Rolin ( France)

Guitarist Brian Abbot (Canada)

Saxophonist Dennis Shafer (Salem)

8-9 p.m. RENDRGRAM (experimental Contemporary Art)

experimental music-art- installation exploring glitch art and rendering the digital world into the physical world…come see the music under the 18ft pyramid!

RendrGram Facebook Event

Sunday, September 15th, at 7:30 p.m. at AMES Hall Salem YMCA–METAMORPHOSES Performance

with Solo Saxophone/Dance/Poetry Interludes

Facebook Event for Metamorphoses

https://www.creativenorthshore.com/north-shore-events/chagallpac-metamorphoses-dance-performance/

Electric Metamorphoses and Movement: A Dance Choreography with Works for Saxophone by Dennis Shafer and ChagallPAC Artists

Choreography and Dance by Betsy Miller, Emily Beattie, Juliana Tilbury,  Rebecca Lang, Angelina Benitez, Jake Crawford, Becky Jo Roland

Poetry Performance: Diana Norma Szokolyai

Costume design by Lee Davis

Lighting/Projection by Siriphong Tipayakisorn

 

June 2: Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Celebrates the 90th Anniversary of the Grolier at the Grolier Poetry Festival – Harvard Sq., Cambridge, MA

On Saturday June 2, 2018, the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, the oldest poetry bookstore in the United States, will be celebrating its 90th Anniversary in Cambridge, MA. In order to celebrate 90 years of literary and intellectual activity, the Grolier will be hosting The Grolier Poetry Festival, featuring street performances, writing workshops, literary readings, food, and books in Harvard Square. The event was recently featured in The Boston Globe. The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is delighted to be featured at the Grolier Poetry Festival on May 19 in Harvard Square.  Join us for our featured readings, performances, and CREDO Workshop!  The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop’s new anthology CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos & Sourcebook for Creative Writing (eds. Rita Banerjee & Diana Norma Szokolyai, May 15, 2018) can be purchased through C&R Press, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. Information about our events and writers are posted below:

A 90th Anniversary Celebration
June 2, 2018, 12pm–8pm

Location: Outside Plympton St,
Between Mass Ave & Bow Street
Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA
1:00-2:00pm                
Welcome and Opening Remarks, Ifeanyi Menkiti, Proprietor, Director, Grolier Poetry Book Shop
 
Poets Read
David Ferry, Kathleen Spivack, and Lloyd Scwartz and Lillian Yvonne Bertram
 
2:00–2:20pm             
Michael Mack, Performs from Hearing Voices, Speaking in Tongues 
 
2:20–2:40pm             
Jim Vrabel, performs from John Berryman’s The Dream Songs
2:40–3:35pm
Poets Read
Fred Marchand • Harris Gardner • Patrick Sylvain • Martha Collins • Ruth Lepson • Dan Tobin • Monique-Adelle Callahan • Gail Mazur

Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Group : Diana Norma Szokolyai, accompanied by Audrey Harrer, Harpist • Kevin McLellan

 3:35-4:15pm  (off stage)
Diana Norma Szokolyai leads a workshop based on CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writingthat she and Rita Banerjee edited. This newly released book will be available for purchase.

Featured Authors:

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).

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).

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).

 

CWW Fall Harvest Retreat in Rockport, MA: Day Three

On Saturday, October 14, we had our third day of workshops. While some of us were tired from working late into the night on our Bake Offs, we still convened in our meeting space for breakfast and our first workshop. Diana Norma Szokolyai led a workshop on Writing in the Lyric Register. In this workshop, we looked over studying lyricism in writing and how paying attention to lyrical structure can improve our writings.

We also had two writing exercises for this workshop. The first was to write a scene that was slowed down to just five seconds. The second was to listen to a piece of music, Edgard Varèse’s “Nocturnal,” and to write whatever came to mind. The challenge was that we were unable to stop writing during the entire piece, leading to over 10 minutes of nonstop writing.

Once we were done, we shared our work. Some of us shed tears, others were surprised by the imagery that came from listening to the piece. When were were done, we all felt we had a better understanding of writing lyrically.

After that, we all went into Rockport for the Harvestfest. We went back to the same area from our first day to look through stalls for local bakeries and restaurants, crafts, and breweries. It was a cool, cloudy day, but it was still nice to walk around and see so much local color. And it certainly helped that all the food was extremely delicious.

We then returned home for the second part of Maya Sonenberg’s Beyond the Plot Triangle workshop. We learned more about unique ways to break through plot structure, such as writing through different formats. We even played quick games of Snakes and Ladders to see how we could use a board game to make a story. This led to a short story about two men named Razzle and Dazzle trying to get beer before all the bars in Rockport closed for the winter.

After that, we broke for dinner and to continue work on our Bake Offs. We had to finish our 20 pages by the next morning, and thus, we prepared for the final day of our retreat.

CWW Summer in Granada Writing Retreat- Aug 4 2017: Storyteller’s Voice, Poetry of Flamenco, & Roma Caves Tour

Today, we started off our day unpacking the elements of The Storyteller’s Voice with Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich.  After enjoying this craft of writing seminar in our classroom overlooking the Alhambra, we enjoyed a lunch break and some free writing time.  We re-convened later in the afternoon for a class on The Evocative Poetry of Flamenco with Diana Norma Szokolyai, who taught about the history of flamenco and its influence on the musical and literary landscape.  We analyzed a variety of forms presented in flamenco lyrics, before setting off for Sacromonte to hike to the museum of the Roma caves.  After visiting several traditional Roma cave dwellings, we went to one of the most well known cuevas, Cueva de la Rocio to enjoy a spectacular performance of Zambra, a traditional Roma (“Gypsy”) wedding dance.  After the performance, we went to the Mirador San Nicolas for a stunning night view of the Alhambra and enjoyed the evening artist market.

-Diana Norma Szokolyai, Granada 2017

Cambridge Writers’ Workshop feat. in The Independent (UK)

The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is delighted to be featured in the British newspaper, The Independent, in their recent feature article, “World of Books: Ready to Write Your Own Best-seller?”  The article focuses on the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Summer in Granada Writing Retreat (Aug 2-6, 2017), and quotes Jennifer Howard’s feature from The Washington Post:

You’ve spent too many summers reading novels, isn’t it about time you started to write one yourself.  Jennifer Howard selects the best of the world’s writing retreats:

Summer in Granada is part of a series of retreats created by writers Rita Banerjee and Diana Norma Szokolyai. They describe their retreat model as a kind of roving salon, with previous sessions in Paris and at a chateau in Picardy, among its envy-inducing locations. “All of these places have a very alive and electric culture, a culture that exists on the streets, in the imagination,” Banerjee says.

To read the complete article, please visit the The Independent’s British edition here.  Applications and scholarships for our Summer in Granada Writing Retreat (Aug 2-6, 2017) are open until June 20, 2017.  Please apply at cww.submittable.com.

Granada2017PosterJune6 copy

Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Newport, RI Writing Retreat feat. in Coldfront Magazine

rhode-islandThe Cambridge Writers’ Workshop’s retreat to Newport, RI has been featured in Coldfront Magazine. The website featured details of our retreat, along with information to help interested parties register for the event.

If you’re interested in the event, you can read more details about the retreat here. You can also register for the event here. You can also check out our Facebook event post for the event. Registration for the event has been extended to March 15th and now includes tuition and a few meals.