Join acclaimed faculty Nick Flynn, Mark Doty and Mary Gaitskill in this distinctive setting for exciting week-long workshops in the Florida sun. Applicants may register now to work with one of the faculty, and participants will be selected on a first-come, first-served basis, with a limit of 12 positions available with each of the 3 faculty. The free-flowing schedule will offer daily 2.5 hour workshops in the mornings, with afternoons of open studio time for writing, as well as craft discussions on a range of topics. Evenings will be set aside for readings by the faculty, a special reading by author TBA and on the final night, an open mic where participants can share their work with the group at large and the local community/audience.

Also on offer are individual sessions with your chosen faculty. These 30-minute conferences are available at an additional cost of $125 to participants.

I wish to Register and Pay NOW!

• Registration Fee (balance due by Nov. 1, 2010) ($150)
• On-site Early Registration (by Oct. 1, 2010) ($1350)
• On-site Registration ($1450)
• Off-site Early Registration (by Oct. 1, 2010) ($1050)
• Off-site Registration ($1150)

Participants are responsible for the costs of travel, and materials.

Course Description

Nick Flynn - Memoir as Bewilderment
Frost would sometimes say at his readings that "poems are about what you don't mean as well as what you do mean" - this could apply to the contemporary concept of memoir as well. When we first approach the idea of writing a memoir we generally write into what believe is our individual and unique autobiography, but as we press on we find that our story is connected to everyone’s story, and only then can we access the deeper mysteries of life. In our weeklong workshop we will wrestle with these deeper mysteries, as well as the concept of “bewilderment,” and how we can embody both in our memoirs - either through syntax, our access to the duende, leaps into the unconscious, or simply circling around what is unsaid, unknown, unrealized. We will look for those moments we begin to stutter and stumble when talking about our projects, for that is the threshold beyond which is unknown, beyond which is the white space on the map. Please come with a willingness to push a little deeper into this shadow world, as well as a working knowledge of the anthology “The Next American Essay” (edited by John D’Agata), and an openness to questioning why you tell the particular stories about your life that you do.

Mark Doty - Complicating the Poem
Sometimes it's all too easy to edit out complexity in the service of making a graceful, seamless poem. This workshop offers a series of exercises designed to help participants generate some material and then complicate it in interesting ways; we'll examine several technical means of digging deeper into the material of a poem. Bring notebook and writing implements.

Mary Gaitskill - The Miasma of Existance:  Imagery and Mystery in The Short Story
This course will be a workshop with a gentle focus on the use of words to create non-verbal imagery with layers of meaning and/or feeling through which we sense the hidden and irrational life of their characters and stories.