Do you have an unfinished novel needing fresh attention, a collection of poems you want to polish, or maybe an interesting idea you've never had time to put on paper?

Whether your interest lies in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or all three genres, you owe it to yourself to come to Keene, New Hampshire, this summer for some serious work on your writing. The Sixth Annual Keene State College Writers Conference offers the ideal setting for escaping into your writing.

Conference Registration Fee $990

The fee covers all conference materials, two dinners and several informal receptions during the week. Participants will receive 3.5 continuing education units for the week.

A down payment of 50% of the $990 registration fee will hold a place for you at the conference. Full payment of all fees for registration, housing, and undergraduate or graduate credit if desired is due by July 6, 2007.

The Schedule

The week is intensive. The conference kicks off Sunday afternoon and evening with a light meal and spirited panel discussion on Problems in Writing. The next five days immerse you in daily workshops, writing sessions, individual conferences, craft talks, readings, informal afterhours gatherings, and, above all, time to write.

In a workshop participants have before them copies of the work of everyone in the group. After you read your poem, essay, or story, the group discusses it with an eye to developing its strengths and revising weak areas. They may suggest more dialogue in stories, more detailed exposition in essays, more focused imagery in poems. The workshop leader encourages everyone to note the most effective and the least successful aspects of each work, since the best revisions come from understanding your strengths and abilities as a writer, not merely your shortcomings.

In a writing session the session leader assigns an exercise for everyone to do during the meeting time. The group may scatter about the library, working individually in the air-conditioned quiet, then regather to share what they have written. If time remains, the session leader encourages critical discussion of each piece. You have the opportunity to submit work written in these sessions to workshops later in the week.

In individual conferences visiting writers in your field of interest meet with you one-on-one to discuss your work. Having read your work beforehand, the writers are prepared to offer suggestions for revising the work at hand and for your future work.

In a craft talk a visiting writer discusses an aspect of his or her work with examples and suggestions for your own work. A craft talk may become a writing session if the visiting writer assigns you an exercise in the area of writing under discussion. This work may be submitted to workshops later in the week.

All visiting writers read from their work. These readings offer you the opportunity to hear a professional writer's oral interpretation of his or her own work and listen to the way rhythm, syntax, and narration work together. You have the same opportunity to share some of your work at the closing event, a group reading by all conference participants.

The Faculty

The faculty, an exceptional group of writers and educators, are here to work with you, individually and in small groups. Conference faculty for 2008 include:

Celia Bland, poet. Her most recent series of poems, Captions for Cartoons Not Yet Drawn, are among the finalists for the Center for Book Arts chapbook prize. Her 2004 collection, Soft Box, received the silver medal for poetry by ForeWord magazine. Bland's poems appeared in Shenandoah, Natural Bridge, Heliotrope, Entelechy, Prima Matera, and Sui Generis and in anthologies published by Faber and Faber, Oxford Poetry, and Persea Books. Dean of studies at Bard College, Bland teaches poetry and first-year seminar at Bard.

William Doreski, author of 17 books of poetry, criticism, and memoir. His nonfiction work includes The Sun Keeps Setting, which is about the last months of his father's life. An English professor, he has taught creative writing at Keene State College since 1982.

Christopher Noel is the author of a novel, Hazard and the Five Delights; a memoir; In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing: A Geography of Grief; and a collection of short stories, A Frail House. He has taught in the Vermont College Fine Arts in Writing Program since 1989. Noel runs an editing service, helping many of his clients get published, accepted into graduate programs, or otherwise progress in their writing. He lives in East Calais, Vermont, where he runs Tall Rock Retreat, each summer and fall.

Jeff Friedman, poet. Black Threads his fourth collection of poetry, has just been published by Carnegie Mellon University press. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, The New Republic, and many other literary journals. He is also a core faculty member in the MFA program in poetry writing at New England College.

Joseph Monninger, author. He has published eight novels and three nonfiction books. His work has appeared in American Heritage, Scientific American, Sports Illustrated, and Ellery Queen, among other publications. He has twice received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and has also received a fellowship from the New Hampshire Council for the Arts. Baby, a young adult novel, appears in September 2008. He is a licensed New Hampshire Fishing Guide.

Dzvinia Orlowsky, founding editor of Four Way Books and author of four poetry collections, including her forthcoming Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones. Her translation from Ukrainian of Alexander Dovzhenko's novella, The Enchanted Desna, was recently published by House Between Water Collections. Orlowsky is a 2006 Pushcart Prize recipient, a 1998 Massachusetts Cultural Council poetry grant recipient, and a faculty member of the Low-Residency Solstice MFA Creative Writing Program of Pine Manor College.

Interested?

You may download, print and complete the brochure and registration packet here, or we can mail you one.

To receive a brochure and a registration packet by mail, please complete the form below.