Continuing Education
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 17, 2009. Academic credit at the undergraduate or graduate level and/or conference housing is available at an additional cost.
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, while giving you 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. 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, working individually in the air-conditioned quiet of the library, before regrouping to share what they have written. If time remains, the session leader encourages critical discussion of each piece.
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 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.
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 award-winning group of writers and educators, are here to work with you, individually and in small groups. The following is a list of the 2009 conference faculty:
Laurie Alberts, author of three novels, a story collection, and two memoirs. Her most recent book, Between Revolutions: An American Romance with Russia, was published in 2005. She received a Michener Award for the Novel, the Katherine Anne Porter Prize, the Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society Prize for short story, and an American Fiction award.
Celia Bland, poet. Her poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Boston Review, The Valparaiso Poetry Review, Writing on the Edge, The Bard Papers, Field Notes, and Poets & Writers magazine. Her 2004 collection, Soft Box, received ForeWord magazine's silver medal for poetry. She is the author of 13 young-adult books, including The Conspiracy of the Secret 9, an historical novel adopted by the Wilmington, North Carolina, school system.
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.
Jeff Friedman, poet. Black Threads, his fourth collection of poetry, was recently 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 a core faculty member in the M.F.A. program in poetry writing at New England College.
Joseph Monninger, author of eight novels and three nonfiction books. His work has appeared in American Heritage, Scientific American, Sports Illustrated, and Ellery Queen, among other publications. He twice received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and also received a fellowship from the New Hampshire Council for the Arts. Baby, a young-adult novel, appeared in September 2008.
Roy Nathanson, internationally acclaimed jazz composer and saxophonist. Roy concentrates on combining text and music in a variety of ways: writing songs for performers such as Elvis Costello, Jeff Buckley, and Deborah Harry; a radio play for NPR, and recording with his singing, talking, and playing band Sotto Voce.
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.
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 winner.
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.