Tag Archives: Stephen Aubrey

Livestream Event: CWW Benefit Reading for the Institute of International Education * Friday, July 24, 8-9 pm EDT

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Cambridge Writers’ Workshop
Institute of International Education Benefit Readig
July 24, 2020 8:00pm—9:00pm EDT on Facebook Live

ChagallPAC’s Fourth Friday Literary Salon Series & the Cambridge Writers Workshop present a livestream reading event to benefit International Students in the US via the Institute of International Education (IIE) on July 24, 2020 at 8:00-9:00 p.m. In light of recent pressures against allowing international students to stay in the United States during COVID-19, we would like to emphasize our support of international connection and study. Many of our own writing retreats are held abroad, and since we have come to understand firsthand the importance of international exchange, we hope to show solidarity with international students during this time by directing resources and attention to IIE.

“IIE’s mission is to help people and organizations leverage the power of international education to thrive in today’s interconnected world.”

“We believe that when education transcends borders, it opens minds, enabling people to go beyond building connections to solving problems together. Our vision is a peaceful, equitable world enriched by the international exchange of ideas and greater understanding between people and cultures.”

IIE focuses on work that “advances scholarship, builds economies, and promotes access to opportunity.” They run over 200 programs for international students with more than 29,000 participants.

If you would like to join us in supporting IIE’s work, you can learn more about making a direct donation here.

Learn more about the authors who will be joining us and participating in our reading:

Stephen Aubrey is a Brooklyn-based writer and theater-maker. His fiction and essays have appeared in CRAFT Literary, Electric Literature, Publishing Genius, and The Brooklyn Review. As a co-founder and co-artistic director of The Assembly Theater Company, his plays have been produced at The New Ohio Theater, The Living Theater, The Ontological-Hysteric Theater, The Flea Theater, The Collapsable Hole, and Edinburgh Fringe Festival where his original play, We Can’t Reach You, Hartford, was nominated for the prestigious Fringe First Award. He is an instructor of English at Brooklyn College.   

Nandini Bhattacharya was born and raised in India and has called the United States her second continent for the last thirty years. Wherever she has lived, she has generally turned to books for answers to life’s big and small questions. Her short stories have been published in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, Storyscape Journal, Raising Mothers, The Bacon Review, The Bangalore Review, OyeDrum, and Ozone Park Journal. She has attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop and held residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, VONA, and Craigardan Writers Residency (forthcoming). She was first runner-up for the Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction contest (2017-2018), a finalist for the Fourth River Folio Contest for Prose Prize (2018), long-listed for the Disquiet International Literary Prize (2019 and 2020), and a finalist for the Reynolds-Price International Women’s Literary Award (2019). Love’s Garden is her first novel. She is currently working on a second novel about love, racism, xenophobia and other mysteries, titled Homeland Blues. She lives outside Houston with her family and two marmalade cats.

Elizabeth Devlin is a visual artist, poet, singer, and multi-instrumentalist. She is the curator of numerous art, music and literary events including the series: The Highwaymen NYC, Prose By Any Other, and Token Folk Acoustic.   As the Founding Director of Bessie’s, a private artist studio and salon, Devlin hosts art, community, literary and acoustic music events in Brooklyn.  Devlin has toured nationally and internationally for over a decade. An Autoharpist and singer-songwriter with avant-garde-folk sensibilities, she defies traditional song structures, weaving small worlds where magic and fantasies collide. Devlin’s third full-length album, Orchid Mantis, released in 2017, received 4.5/5 from Impose Magazine and is the follow-up to the previously released albums: For Whom the Angels Named, in 2011, Ladybug EP in 2011 and All Are Relative, in 2009.  In 2020, Devlin will release her second EP, Conscientious Objector.  Post-COVID, Devlin will continue to tour and will release her fourth full-length album, My Father’s Country.

Heather Thomas Loepp is pursuing an MFA in creative writing; meddling with her favorites: poetry, hybrid and the lyric essay. She has worked previously as a journalist, writing profiles on local artists, events, and the music scene—writing songs long before poetry in bands since childhood. Her poetry explores Native American mixed-blood identity, the camaraderie that can be found in poverty, and intergenerational trauma with humor & tenderness. She is working on publishing her first book of poems, entitled If I Were an Unhooked Rabbit. Heather spends her free time cooking elaborate meals for no one in her tiny house in the woods, where the fear of being mauled by a neighborhood cougar is a daily concern. Please send help or dinner guests. 

Diana Norma Szokolyai is the Executive Artistic Director of Cambridge Writers’ Workshop and co-founder of Chagall Performance Art Collaborative. 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 Magazine, and 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 radio.

Join the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop at AWP 2020!!

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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 Poets, Poets & Writers, PANK, Nat. Brut., The Scofield, The Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mass Poetry, Hyphen Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric 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 Spring in New Orleans Writing Retreat (March 19-22, 2020) are now live! Apply by March 10, 2020!

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The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is pleased to announce our fourth annual Spring in New Orleans Writing Retreat! Apply to the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Spring in New Orleans (March 19-22, 2020) Writing Retreat by March 10, 2020 on cww.submmittable.com! Known for its Spanish and French architecture, live jazz, Cajun food, and street festivals, New Orleans offers an inspirational and one-of-a-kind experience for writers. Our retreat features multi-genre workshops, as well as craft seminars and time to write. The faculty includes award-winning writers & playwrights: Stephen Aubrey, Rita Banerjee, and Diana Norma Szokolyai. All genres welcome. Genres include playwriting, nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. This year, we will also be exploring writing for live action roleplay (LARP) theater with an expert. The cost of the retreat is $1650, which includes tuition, lodging, and some meals. If you’d like to join us in NOLA, please apply by our priority deadline of March 1, 2020 by submitting 5-10 pages of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or a play with a $10 application fee, a cover letter, and references at cww.submittable.com. Please also include the following in your cover letter:
    1. Full Legal Name
    2. Contact Information (Email, Address, Phone)
    3. Age & Nationality
    4. Prior Workshop Experience and Publications
    5. Creative Writing Goals for the Retreat
    6. Short One-paragraph Biography
    7. Contact info of Two Personal References (Name, Email, Address, Phone, Relationship to Applicant)
Due to limited seats, early applications are encouraged. Our Scholarship Deadline for our 2020 retreats is March 1, 2020.  Thus, applications are encouraged by our priority deadline of March 1, 2020.  All applications will be reviewed through March 10, 2020.
apply

Priority Deadline: March 1, 2020

Featured Faculty:

Stephen Aubrey is a Brooklyn-based writer and dramaturg. He is co-artistic director and resident playwright of The Assembly theater company. His plays have been produced at The New Ohio Theater, The Living Theater, The Flea Theater, The Collapsable Hole, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His writing has appeared in Electric Literature, Publishing Genius, and The Brooklyn Review. He teaches creative writing and literature in the CUNY system.

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 Poets, Poets & Writers, PANK, Nat. Brut., The Scofield, The Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mass Poetry, Hyphen Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric 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.

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 Quarterly, The 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).

   

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. This amount is non-refundable. The remainder of tuition will be due by March 10, 2020. Our standard and preferred method of payment is PayPal invoice. You can also mail us a check. Please email us at directors [at]cambridgewritersworkshop.org and we will provide instructions for mailing.

What is included in tuition?

    • creative writing workshops
    • craft of writing seminars
    • lodging in NOLA
    • breakfasts & some other meals

I’m local to New Orleans. Is there a tuition only option?

Yes. For more information, please inquire at directors[at]cambridgewritersworkshop.org.

What are accommodations like?

During the retreat, we will be staying at the lovely Pelham Hotel. The hotel is centrally located and within walking distance to the French Quarter, Bourbon St, Convention Center and the Superdome. In this location, you will have access to museums, historical sites, malls, and many other exciting attractions!

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

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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

CWW Spring in New Orleans Writing Retreat (March 14-17) Schedule Announced! Apply by February 28, 2019

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Apply to the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Spring in New Orleans (March 14-17, 2019) Writing Retreat by February 28, 2019 on cww.submmittable.com! Known for its Spanish and French architecture, live jazz, Cajun food, and street festivals, New Orleans offers an inspirational and one-of-a-kind experience for writers. Our retreat features multi-genre workshops, as well as craft seminars and time to write.

The faculty includes award-winning writers & playwrights: Stephen Aubrey, Carly Dwyer, Rita Banerjee, and Diana Norma Szokolyai. All genres welcome. Genres include playwriting, nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. This year, we will also be exploring writing for live action roleplay (LARP) theater with an expert. The cost of the retreat is $1200, which includes tuition, lodging, and some meals. Due to limited seats, early applications are encouraged. Applications are due February 28, 2019.

apply

Deadline: February 28, 2019

Schedule & Classes:

Emotion and Suspense in Theatre, Poetry, and (Non)Fiction
with Rita Banerjee

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

Weirding the World
with Stephen Aubrey

“My mind affects my reality.” -Farad’n Corrino (in Frank Herbert’s Dune)

Every piece of writing is an act of imagination, another world passing before you in time and space. Language is only one part of this world. The rest is space. And before we populate this space, we must create it. In this class, we will discuss the basics of world-building and, through guided exercise, explore the spaces in which our writing takes place, interrogating our own implicit assumptions and expectations of what is possible in our imagined universes.

The Situation and the Story
with Stephen Aubrey

When we write, we usually start from something: a character, a setting, a phrase, an event. And we usually have an initial sense of where things will end up (even if we’re eventually wrong about that). But to get from that establishing moment to a satisfying denouement requires an unfathomable number of decisions about structure, character, point of view, and information flow. These decisions are what carve story out from situation. This class will focus on how one can create effective narrative and character arc by tackling the important decisions every writer must make.

LARP Theatre: No End In Sight
with Carly Dwyer

Description: LARP-Theatre creator Carly Dwyer will take you through a condensed series of exercises she has devised for creating complex playable characters that inhabit the worlds of her live action role play based theatre pieces. Instead of creating characters who travel through an arc, larp writing requires developing characters with complex characteristics and details that allow the character to exist wholly in their world, but for whom their story has no predetermined ending. Combining theatre exercises with writing prompts, research and fieldwork, this class will have you on your feet, in your head, and out in the world.

Featured Faculty:

Stephen Aubrey is a Brooklyn-based writer and dramaturg. He is co-artistic director and resident playwright of The Assembly theater company. His plays have been produced at The New Ohio Theater, The Living Theater, The Flea Theater, The Collapsable Hole, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His writing has appeared in Electric Literature, Publishing Genius, and The Brooklyn Review. He teaches creative writing and literature in the CUNY system.

Carly Dwyer is an experienced director, educator and designer passionate about intersectional learning opportunities and sustainable creative economies. She uses immersive LARP theater as a way to challenge audience boundaries, to provide opportunities for audience autonomy in the story, and to explore the limits of their capabilities from within our worlds. Through collaborations with the venues and communities she works with, she helps organizations diversify their engagement and innovate the way the public interacts with their business.

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 named one of Book Riot’s “Must-Read Poetic Voices of Split This Rock 2018”, was nominated for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, 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 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 Poets, Poets & Writers, Nat. Brut., The Scofield, The Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mass Poetry, Hyphen Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, AWP WC&C Quarterly, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Tahoma Literary Review, 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, an Associate Scholar at Harvard, and the judge for the 2017 Minerva Rising “Dare to Speak” Poetry Chapbook Contest. 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.

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 Quarterly, The 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).

Happy New Year 2019 -💖- the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop

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Happy New Year 2019 from all of us here at the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop! We are looking forward to another year filled with inspiring and creative writing workshops and retreats, readings 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.

2018 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, and connected with other writers at readings and events throughout the country.

We kicked the year off at AWP 2018 in Tampa, FL. This year’s AWP marked several important moments for the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. It was there we released our first ever anthology, CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, published by C&R Press. The anthology featured over fifty writers sharing their personal writing manifestos, essays on the craft of writing, and writing exercises to show where the field of literature is heading in the 21st century. This release coincided with a reading at the Spontaneous Reading Party, where CREDO authors Rita Banerjee, Janine Harrison, Kevin McLellan,  Nell Irvin Painter, Anca L. Szilágyi, and Diana Norma Szokolyai shared their work along with other authors from C&R Press and Women’s National Book Association. It was also during this event that we announced our call for submissions for our next anthology, Disobedient Futures. The speculative literature anthology asks writers to imagine what the future cultures of America and the world might look like, and submit their work on the following topics: Disobedient Women, Disobedient Class, Disobedient Tribes, and Disobedient Futures. Submissions will be accepted until February 14, 2019.

We also continued to host our national and international writing retreats in 2018. In April, we traveled to New Orleans, LA, where Rita Banerjee, Diana Norma Szokolyai, and literary agent Natalie Kimber held writing workshops on subjects like finding a literary agent and Rasa theory, all while participants enjoyed staying in a house in the famous Algiers Point neighborhood. In July, we traveled to Paris, France, where we were joined by authors Kathleen Spivack and Kristina Marie Darling for poetry and memoir writing workshops in one of the most famous literary cities in the world. In August, we returned to Granada, Spain with author Tim Horvath to use the diverse and unique city to aid in our writing processes.

It was also in 2018 that we held several great literary readings and events. Earlier in the year, CWW Creative Director Rita Banerjee released her new poetry collection Echo in Four Beats. This included a workshop on Literary Manifestos and What’s at Stake? in Weehawken, NJ, followed by a launch party that same night, which included writers Dallas Athent and Jonah Kruvant. That same month, Banerjee was a part of the literary panel “Fantasy As Reality: Activism & Catharsis in Speculative Writing,” which was part of the Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation and Witness (April 19-21, 2018) in Washington, D.C., along with poets Christina M. Rau and Marlena Chertock. The panel demonstrated how non-realist poems and prose can offer a space for political critique and empowerment. The panelists also held a reading entitled “Disobedient Futures,” which included CWW Communications and PR Manager Alex Carrigan.

On June 2nd, CWW’s Artistic Director, Diana Norma Szokolyai, was a featured performer at the Grolier Poetry Bookshop’s 90th Anniversary Celebration. She performed her poetry with musical collaborators Dennis Shafer (saxophone) and Audrey Harrer (harp). Cambridge Writers’ Workshop was also represented by readings given by faculty member Kathleen Spivack and contributor to CREDO, Kevin McLellan. That afternoon, Diana Norma Szokolyai also led a Writing Workshop on Literary Manifestos and Jumpstarting the Process of Writing inside the Grolier Poetry Bookshop  using exercises like her own “What’s At Stake” and Kathleen Spivack’s “Words as Inspiration” from CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing.

In September, the CWW also made an appearance at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Along with hosting a table at the event, the CWW held a reading at WORD Bookstore, featuring several CWW members and affiliates, including Rita Banerjee, Diana Norma Szokolyai, Alex Carrigan, Amanda Toronto, Emily Smith, Stephen Aubrey, Madeleine Barnes, Elizabeth Devlin, Jonah Kruvant, and Devynity Wray. These authors welcomed the festival by sharing some of their original poems, short stories, and play excerpts.

We wish to give a warm congratulations to the CWW Co-Directors Rita Banerjee and Diana Norma Szokolyai for some notable honors in 2018. Rita Banerjee’s book Echo in Four Beats was nominated for the National Book Award in Poetry by Finishing Line Press. Diana Norma Szokolyai’s poem “Shadows of the Pantry” was shortlisted for the prestigious Bridport Prize, received honorable mention in the 87th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition, and will be published in 87th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition Collection.

With 2018 over, the CWW is now looking forward to what 2019 has in store. We are still looking for literary submissions to our Disobedient Futures anthology, so please read over our guidelines to find out how you can submit. We are also planning to once again host retreats in New Orleans and Paris, featuring Stephen Aubrey, Carly Dwyer, and Kazim Ali. More information about the retreats will be announced in the coming months.

We hope to see you sometime this year!

 

Apply to the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Spring in New Orleans (March 14-17, 2019) Writing Retreat by Feb 5!

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Apply to the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Spring in New Orleans (March 14-17, 2019) Writing Retreat by February 5, 2019 on cww.submmittable.com! Known for its Spanish and French architecture, live jazz, Cajun food, and street festivals, New Orleans offers an inspirational and one-of-a-kind experience for writers. Our retreat features multi-genre workshops, as well as craft seminars and time to write.

The faculty includes award-winning writers & playwrights: Stephen Aubrey, Carly Dwyer, Rita Banerjee, and Diana Norma Szokolyai. All genres welcome. Genres include playwriting, nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. This year, we will also be exploring writing for live action roleplay (LARP) theater with an expert. The cost of the retreat is $1200, which includes tuition, lodging, and some meals.

If you’d like to join us in NOLA, please apply by February 5, 2019 by submitting 5-10 pages of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or a play with a $10 application fee, a cover letter, and references at cww.submittable.com. Please also include the following in your cover letter:

1. Full Legal Name
2. Contact Information (Email, Address, Phone)
3. Age & Nationality
4. Prior Workshop Experience and Publications
5. Creative Writing Goals for the Retreat
6. Short One-paragraph Biography
7. Contact info of Two Personal References (Name, Email, Address, Phone, Relationship to Applicant)

Due to limited seats, early applications are encouraged. Applications are due February 5, 2019.

apply

Deadline: February 5, 2019

Featured Faculty:

Stephen Aubrey is a Brooklyn-based writer and dramaturg. He is co-artistic director and resident playwright of The Assembly theater company. His plays have been produced at The New Ohio Theater, The Living Theater, The Flea Theater, The Collapsable Hole, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His writing has appeared in Electric Literature, Publishing Genius, and The Brooklyn Review. He teaches creative writing and literature in the CUNY system.

Carly Dwyer is an experienced director, educator and designer passionate about intersectional learning opportunities and sustainable creative economies. She uses immersive LARP theater as a way to challenge audience boundaries, to provide opportunities for audience autonomy in the story, and to explore the limits of their capabilities from within our worlds. Through collaborations with the venues and communities she works with, she helps organizations diversify their engagement and innovate the way the public interacts with their business.

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 named one of Book Riot’s “Must-Read Poetic Voices of Split This Rock 2018”, was nominated for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, 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 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 Poets, Poets & Writers, Nat. Brut., The Scofield, The Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mass Poetry, Hyphen Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, AWP WC&C Quarterly, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Tahoma Literary Review, 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, an Associate Scholar at Harvard, and the judge for the 2017 Minerva Rising “Dare to Speak” Poetry Chapbook Contest. 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.

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 Quarterly, The 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).

FAQ:

What happens after I apply?

Once you apply, you can expect to hear from us within 7-10 days and know whether you were accepted into the program. Once you are accepted, you will receive a welcome packet with detailed information regarding 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. This amount is non-refundable. The remainder of tuition will be due by February 5, 2019. Our standard and preferred method of payment is PayPal invoice. You can also mail us a check.

What is included in tuition?

  • creative writing workshops
  • craft of writing seminars
  • lodging in NOLA
  • breakfasts & some other meals
  • walking tour of downtown New Orleans and Cafe du Monde

What are accommodations like?

During the retreat, we will be staying in the lovely Algiers Point neighborhood, just a short ferry ride away from the Historic French Quarter. Writers will be staying at our retreat house and at a hotel nearby. Rooms at the retreat house will be provided to early registrants first.

CWW Presents: WORD — A Brooklyn Book Festival Reading

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The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop will be hosting a reading during the annual Brooklyn Book Festival in Brooklyn, New York. The reading will be held on Saturday, September 15 at WORD Bookstore (126 Franklin St. Brooklyn, NY 11222) from 7 pm to 8:30 pm. Come visit our reading to hear from ten amazing authors who will be sharing some of their latest work.

Check out our incredible reading list:

 

Stephen Aubrey is a Brooklyn-based writer and dramaturg. He is co-artistic director and resident playwright of The Assembly theater company. His plays have been produced at The New Ohio Theater, The Living Theater, The Flea Theater, The Collapsable Hole, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. His writing has appeared in Electric Literature, Publishing Genius, and The Brooklyn Review. He teaches creative writing and literature in the CUNY system.

Rita BanerjeeRitaBanerjee is the editor of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018) and the author of the poetry collection Echo in Four Beats (Finishing Line Press, March 2018), 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 Poets, Poets & Writers, Nat. Brut., The Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mass Poetry, Hyphen Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, VIDA, Objet d’Art, KBOO Radio’s APA Compass, and elsewhere. She is the Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop.   She is the judge for the 2017 Minerva Rising “Dare to Speak” Poetry Chapbook Contest, and 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.

Lisa Marie Basile is the author of APOCRYPHALand 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).

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.

Alexander Carrigan is the Communications and PR manager for the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop and has been with the organization since 2014. He is currently an assistant editor with the American Correctional Association. He has had fiction, poetry, reviews (film, TV, and literature), and nonfiction work published in Mercurial Stories, 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) and was one of the anthology’s assistant editors.

Elizabeth Devlin, with her haunting combination of lilting voice and enchanting Autoharp, is a self-produced NYC singer- songwriter. Devlin defies traditional musical structure with many of her songs, building miniature narratives and magical worlds where characters, fantasies and time collide. Devlin has toured nationally, internationally, & performs in venues throughout NYC’s 5 boroughs. “Orchid Mantis,” her newest full-length album, was released in February 2017 at Sidewalk Café’s Winter Anti-folk Festival in NYC.

Jonah Kruvant’s successful first novel, The Last Book Ever Written, a dystopian satire set in a futuristic society where creativity is illegal, was published by PanAm Books in April 2015. His work has also appeared in Digital Americana, On the Verge, Bewildering Stories, Fiction on the Web, the Scarlet Leaf Review, and LIMN Literary and Arts Journal. I received an MFA degree in Fiction from Goddard College. Read about my work, book tour, and blog at www.jonahkruvant.com.

Emily Smith is currently an MFA student in nonfiction at Columbia University. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Buzzfeed, Brooklyn Magazine, and many others. She’s previously worked as a Contributing Blogger for Ploughshares and a reviewer at Kirkus Reviews. You can follow her on Twitter at @esmithwrites.

 

DianVersion 2a Norma Szokolyai recently received honorable mention  in the 87th Annual Writers’ Digest Writing Competition for her poem “Shadows of the Pantry,” based on the experiences of her grandmother in war-torn Hungary, which will be featured in the Writers’ Digest Collection forthcoming in November 2018. She is the editor of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos & Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, 2018). She’s also founding Executive Artistic Director of Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. Her poetry chapbook, Parallel Sparrows, received honorable mention for Best Poetry Book at the 2014 Paris Book Festival and her first poetry collection, Roses in the Snow placed first runner-up for Best Poetry Book at the 2009 DIY Book Festival. She is also author of 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, Snapdragon Journal, 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, Always Wondering, and Our Last Walk. 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.

Amanda TorontoAmanda Toronto received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University where she focused on contemporary American literature, art, and religion. She lives with her family in New York City and is at work on her first novel.

 

Devynity Wray is a Black Expressionist (artist, writer, performer, and poet) who graduated from the Fiorello LaGuardia High School of Music & Arts and Performing Arts with an Arts Regents Diploma. She also earned her Bachelor’s of the Arts Cum Laude in Africana, Puerto-Rican and Latino Studies from Hunter College.  Devynity was a slam team member with the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe in 2002 which placed 3rd that year at the National Poetry Slam Contest. Her poem “Black Girl Manifesto” has also been published in Hill Harper’s critically acclaimed Letters to a Young Sister. Born and raised in Queens, New York, Devynity’s work embodies an amalgam of her intimate experiences growing up as a woman of color in the inner city and the struggles of its inhabitants. She is currently working on projects in music, video and on the page that will piece all that she has to offer into coherent experiences for her audience.

 

We hope to see you there!

 

Rita Banerjee’s poetry collection “Echo in Four Beats” now available for order on Amazon!

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Rita Banerjee’s new poetry collection Echo in Four Beats is now available for order on Amazon.com and also through the Finishing Line Press website. Echo in Four Beats will officially release on March 9, 2018 at the AWP 2018 Conference in Tampa, Florida.  Here are some upcoming authors signings for Echo in Four Beats:

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.

And here is more information about the collection:

Combining elements, rhythms, and personas from American jazz, blues, and ragtime, poet Rita Banerjee presents a modern-day spin on the love story of Echo and Narcissus in her debut full-length poetry collection, Echo in Four Beats.  But in this story, told in four parts, Echo is more than just a fragment, she is a Sapphic voice that speaks, foretells, forestalls, and repeats. 

Praise for Echo in Four Beats:

“In our narcissism-addled times, Rita Banerjee awakens Echo out of mythical slumber and accords her center stage, with stirring results. These poems dance nimbly from the playful to the sacred, the pentatonic-ancient to the jazzy-contemporary, the observational to the contemplative, and cross languages and borders with abandon…offering a music both savory and profound.” — Tim Horvath, author of Understories and Circulation

“Echo in Four Beats uncover[s] what makes a word into a sensation, a sensation into a moment and what, in the swirling constellation of geographies, turns a moment into the sublime. Amidst the kinetic search for buried treasure in everyday encounters,…there are also unexpected collisions with silence so shocking, they stop us dead in our tracks. We realize the whiteness between words was here all along; its stillness curving the inside of this syncopated journey across time and space.”— Dipika Guha, playwright and author of Mechanics of Loveand The Rules, and screenwriter for American Gods

“From Ovid to Baudelaire, from Manhattan to Atlantis to the Ganges, these poems conjure shape-shifting and gyroscopic worlds where erasure is sustenance, myth is religion, and home is but a constant state of momentary arrivals. Banerjee’s attentive, precise, incantatory poems reverberate… with the “enchantments of art/ and life.’” — Tara Skurtu, author of The Amoeba Game and Skurtu, Romania

“Rita Banerjee’s Echo in Four Beats is a lyric wonder. Wildly intertextual and multilingual…the breadth of her work is staggering and yet utterly approachable, at once intimate and worldly. This may well be the first truly post-national book of poems I’ve ever read. I look forward to reading it again and again.” — Jaswinder Bolina, author of The 44th of July, Phantom Camera, and Carrier Wave

“[In] Banerjee’s polyglot collection–abounding with erasure, mistranslation and wit, [she] has crafted something astonishing.” — Stephen Aubrey, author of Daguerreotypeand What I Took in My Hand and Co-Artistic Director of The Assembly Theater, NYC

RitaBanerjeeRita Banerjee is the editor of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018) and 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 Poets, Poets & Writers, Nat. Brut., The Scofield, The Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mass Poetry, Hyphen Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric 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 Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop.  Born in California and raised in New Jersey, she teaches on modernism, art house film, and South Asian literary theory and aesthetics at the Institute for Indology and Tibetology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München 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 book on South Asian literary modernisms, and a collection of lyric essays. Her work is represented by literary agent Natalie Kimber at The Rights Factory.

Book Launch: Echo in Four Beats (poems) by Rita Banerjee Available for Pre-Order October 10 – December 8, 2017!

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Rita Banerjee‘s poetry debut, Echo in Four Beats, is now available for pre-order on the Finishing Line Press website from October 10 – December 8, 2017!

Combining elements, rhythms, and personas from American jazz, blues, and ragtime, poet Rita Banerjee presents a modern-day spin on the love story of Echo and Narcissus in her debut full-length poetry collection, Echo in Four Beats.  But in this story, told in four parts, Echo is more than just a fragment, she is a Sapphic voice that speaks, foretells, forestalls, and repeats.  Echo in Four Beats, which was a finalist for the Red Hen Press Benjamin Saltman Award, the Three Mile Harbor Book Prize, the Aquarius Press/Willow Books Literature Award, will be released by Finishing Line Press on February 2, 2018.

Early Praise for Echo in Four Beats:

“Echo in Four Beats sounds the singular pulse of Harlem, Kyoto, Nainital and San Francisco to uncover a deeper mystery; what makes a word into a sensation, a sensation into a moment and what, in the swirling constellation of geographies, turns a moment into the sublime. Amidst the kinetic search for buried treasure in everyday encounters with photocopiers and the breathless search for lost objects, there are also unexpected collisions with silence so shocking, they stop us dead in our tracks. We realise the whiteness between words was here all along; its stillness curving the inside of this syncopated journey across time and space.”

— Dipika Guha, playwright and author of Mechanics of Love and The Rules, and screenwriter for American Gods

“Rita Banerjee’s Echo in Four Beats is a lyric wonder. Wildly intertextual and multilingual, Banerjee mines literatures, histories, and geographies, both eastern and western, to produce an expansive collection of poems. The breadth of her work is staggering and yet utterly approachable, at once intimate and worldly. This may well be the first truly post-national book of poems I’ve ever read. I look forward to reading it again and again.”

— Jaswinder Bolina, author of The 44th of July, Phantom Camera, andCarrier Wave

“Rita Banerjee’s Echo in Four Beats is a multilingual, intercontinental arpeggio of a journey on which ‘one layer/ of enchantment// dispels another.’ From Ovid to Baudelaire, from Manhattan to Atlantis to the Ganges, these poems conjure shape-shifting and gyroscopic worlds where erasure is sustenance, myth is religion, and home is but a constant state of momentary arrivals. Banerjee’s attentive, precise, incantatory poems reverberate ‘not sound not/ voice” and resound with the “enchantments of art/ and life.’”

— Tara Skurtu, author of The Amoeba Game and Skurtu, Romania

“In our narcissism-addled times, Rita Banerjee awakens Echo out of mythical slumber and accords her center stage, with stirring results. These poems dance nimbly from the playful to the sacred, the pentatonic-ancient to the jazzy-contemporary, the observational to the contemplative, and cross languages and borders with abandon, from trains in India to a Munich museum to the local copy shop. Yet while they may ‘change [their] temperament as quickly as salamanders change skin,’ Echo in Four Beats  is constantly returning us to a tonic center and rebuilding its chords and arpeggios anew, offering a music both savory and profound.”

— Tim Horvath, author of Understories and Circulation

“Banerjee’s polyglot collection–pushing at the edges of language; abounding with erasure, mistranslation and wit; impossible to contain in a single tongue. From the smallest pieces of our world–the falling snow, cobblestone, a reflection in the water–Banerjee has crafted something astonishing that reaches towards higher truths.”

— Stephen Aubrey, author of Daguerreotype and What I Took in My Handand Co-Artistic Director of The Assembly Theater, NYC

Pre-Order Echo in Four Beats on the Finishing Line Press website now!

ritabanerjeeRita Banerjee 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, March 2018).  She is the author of the poetry collection Echo in Four Beats (Finishing Line Press, February 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 the Academy of American Poets, Poets & Writers, Nat. Brut., The Scofield, The Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mass Poetry, Hyphen Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric 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 received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington.  She is an Associate Scholar of Comparative Literature at Harvard and teaches at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich in Germany.  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.