the summer writing workshop season (part one)
For many writers, summer is the most magical of seasons! Personally, not for me (I do like the warmth, but summer is miserable and sweaty and humid ick) but what I mean is that summer is workshop season! (BTW: I apologize for any typos, etc in this post. My display is glitching and I need to get it fixed tomorrow. Whoops!)
In the last two years, I've taken this to the extreme (but mostly this summer. This summer was insane) by attending multiple workshops--but those have mostly been online. But because educators are normally free during the summer, it gives them an ideal time to go on vacation to nerd out with other writers. There are a few very famous selected (or juried, I suppose) conferences/workshops in the summer: Bread Loaf, Kenyon, McCormack Writing Center (fka Tin House; my literary home! I am biased!), Sewanee, amongst others. These selective workshops are like writer summer camp. Most attendees live on campus for the time being, immersing themselves in craft and community. Some of these workshops have agents and editors, so you can pitch directly to them. (The networking at these things are BIG fucking deal.)
Summer Recap
I ended up spending the majority of my early spring to late summer traveling for residencies and conferences. As I stated in a previous post, I was in Guatemala for my first writing residency, which was a beautiful experience. El ParΓ©don is one of my favourite places in the world despite its extreme heat, and I'll forever be changed by my time there.
The First MFA Residency
I finally started my MFA program! I'm a fiction fellow, which means that I was able to have a significant portion of my tuition covered. (It doesn't hurt that I have a fancy fellowship name too.) One day I'll explain the gist of a low-residency MFA program, but essentially I didn't have to move at all and need to be in Virginia two times a year. During these ~10 day long residencies, I'm interacting with people in my genre across workshops--both giving and receiving feedback. At these residencies, I'm also interviewing the writing mentors to rank them for the semester-long mentorship. My cohort was the biggest the program has ever had, and many of the faculty and my fellow classmates had nothing but amazing things to say. That being said, I'm glad my work gets a closer look. There is also an ice cream shop very close to the college, where I ended up going almost every day. Because the food wasn't great otherwise.
McCormack Writing Center
Shortly after my MFA residency, I flew to Portland, OR for the McCormack Writing Center's inaugural summer workshop. While the program isn't new, the reason it's technically the first MWC summer workshop ever is because the parent publishing house was bought out and they were left to become their own fledgling organization. That being said, it's one of my favourite places and writing homes. This is my workshop cohort and myself at MWC. I stopped writing CNF for about half a year because of a terrible workshop I went to last October. MWC is one of my favourite places and literary homes for a reason. This workshop was a beautiful way to reinvigorate my passion for non fiction after a writer (whose work I love and now no longer respect lol) told me, verbatim, that I needed to write more vivid details in my traumatic scenes because they "couldn't root for the narrator, otherwise." As it was a memoir excerpt, I think you can tell the narrator was me.
Anyway, all that to say is that MWC changed my life. Kayla, who is a managing editor at Autostraddle, and also my non-fiction workshop facilitator, is the GOAT. Her personalized prompts sparked the joy and play in myself--something I thought was lost after that workshop last October. (It also didn't hurt that one of my best friends and I got to spend some time in Portland shortly after, writing, resting, eating and watching bad reality television.)
This is getting long, so I'm going to split this into two parts! I'll cover my time at Allegheny Workshops & Storyboard Conference & Festival in another post. Have you ever been to a writing workshop? Would you consider trying one?
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