2010/2011 Omnium Gatherum & Newsletter
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omnium gatherum & newsletter 2 0 1 0 - 2 0 1 1 i s s u e 1 5 COMMUNITY OF WRITERS AT SQUAW VALLEY OUR SUPPORTERS OMNIUM GATHERUM & NEWSLETTER TABLE 2010-2011, Issue 15 The Community of Writers gratefully acknowledges the financial support that OF Community of Writers at Squaw Valley makes our programs possible: A Non-Profit Corporation #629182 Academy Foundation of The Academy of P .O . Box 1416, Nevada City, CA 95959 Motion Picture Arts & Sciences CONTENTS E-mail: brett@squawvalleywriters .org The Bookshelf Bookstores www .squawvalleywriters .org Depot Bookstore Newsletter edited and designed by Entrekin Foundation Maxima Kahn Anne & Gordon Getty Foundation with support and advice from Hotel Rex Brett Hall Jones LEF Foundation National Endowment for the Arts Announcing Our 2011 Summer Programs . .4 BOARD OF DIRECTORS San Francisco Foundation Note from the Editor . .5 President Max Byrd Squaw Valley Ski Corporation Remembering Lucille Clifton . .6 Vice President Joanne Meschery Squaw Valley Institute Secretary Eddy Ancinas University of California, Irvine Poetry Staff News . .7 Financial OfficerBurnett Miller University of California, Riverside Osvaldo Ancinas Dean Young Needs Our Help . .8 and our many individual donors and friends, Jan Buscho Participant Profile: Keetje Kuipers . .10 Alan Cheuse as well as Lou DeMattei, Amy Tan, Lucinda Mark Childress Watson and an anonymous donor for their PoetWatch: Poetry Participant News . .11 Nancy Cushing major contributions to the Community of Sounds of Summer 2009: Music Heard in the Office . .17 Richard Ford Writers Endowment . Blair Fuller Summer 2010 Special Thanks and Gallery of Photos . .18 Diana Fuller Screenwriting Staff News . .21 Barbara Hall Edwina Leggett ABOUT OUR ADVERTISERS Screenwriting Participant News . .22 James Naify The ads which appear in this issue represent Participant Profile: Felicia Lowe . .25 Michael Pietsch the work of Community of Writers staff and Christopher Sindt participants . These ads help to defray the Published Alumni Reading Series . .26 Amy Tan cost of the newsletter . If you have a recent John C. Walker Writers Workshop Staff News . .30 or forthcoming book, please contact us Harold Weaver The Pleasures and Necessity of Browsing by Alan Cheuse . .33 Al Young about advertising in our next annual issue . Contact Maxima Kahn for a Rate Sheet Writers Workshop Participant News . .37 THE WORKSHOPS and more information: (530) 273-3566 The Community of Writers Goes Social! . .50 Executive Director Brett Hall Jones or maxima@squawvalleywriters .org Writers Workshops: or visit: www .squawvalleywriters .org Participant Profile: Jennifer Egan . .51 Lisa Alvarez All But Dissertation: A Short Short Story by Janet Fitch . .52 Louis B. Jones Michael Carlisle A Letter from Brett . .53 Poetry Robert Hass PLEASE NOTE: We are not able to fact-check Remembering Tad . .54 Screenwriting Diana Fuller the submitted news. We apologize if any You Might Want To Consider . .55 incorrect information is published. Contributors This Issue . .55 ~ ~ 20ii A Note from the Editor COMMUNITY elcome to the Omnium Gatherum & Newsletter! POETRY WORKSHOPS: July 16 - 23 Jack Kerouac in his “Belief Robert Hass · Brenda Hillman W and Technique for Modern Prose: List of OF WRITERS Cathy Park Hong · Major Jackson · Sharon Olds Essentials” gives as number 19: “Accept & Special Guest Galway Kinnell Loss Forever.” Number 20 is “Believe in the holy contour of life .” We’ve had to Send WRITERS WORKSHOPS: August 6 - 13 weather some very heavy losses in the Us David Bajo · Elise Blackwell · Max Byrd Community of Writers in recent years: Your Michael Carlise · Ron Carlson · Alan Cheuse first our co-founder Oakley Hall II, Mark Childress · Leslie Daniels · Gill Dennis then beloved staff members James D. News! Alex Espinosa · Janet Fitch · Karen Joy Fowler Houston and Lucille Clifton, and now Lynn Freed · Dagoberto Gilb · Sands Hall suddently Oakley “Tad” Hall III, as well PAST PARTICIPANT OR STAFF? as Pokey, mascot for so many years . It’s Gerald Haslam · Rhoda Huffey · Louis B. Jones Do you have news you would like us Squaw Valley not so easy to accept that loss is woven to include in the next newsletter? The Michelle Latiolais · Frederick Reiken · Jason Roberts into the fabric of our lives, and from Omnium is published once a year . We Robin Romm · Jervey Tervalon that acceptance to find our renewed print publishing credits, awards and Literary Agents · Book & Literary Magazine Editors belief in the holy contour of those California similar new writing-related achieve- and more lives . But that is precisely part of the ments, and also include births . News PUBLISHED ALUMNI: enduring work of great writing . One of the earliest and longest-standing should be from the past year only. SUMMER Sara J. Henry · Alma Katsu Please compose it in third person, us- Michael David Lukas · Jessica O’Dwyer · Alia Yunis tasks of our poets and writers has been to help us grieve, acknowledge ing complete sentences . Include titles, WRITING PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS: and celebrate what we’ve lost and periodicals, publisher, and publication Sam Barry · Kathi Kamen Goldmark help us find the holy contour in it all, dates, as needed . Deadline: Septem- WORKSHOPS Diane Johson · Anne Lamott · David Lukas the beauty and mystery, the thread of ber 1, 2011 for next issue. Malcolm Margolin · Amy Tan sense, the story . Financial Aid available We dedicate this issue of the Thank you to each of you who Application Deadlines SCREENWRITING: August 6 - 13 Omnium Gatherum & Newsletter Production commitments will determine the continues this grand tradition of to the memories of long-time availability of staff members and guests. meaning-making, story-weaving and May 10 for Poetry staff member and friend Lucille Eugene Corr · Pamela Gray · Toney Merritt bringing out the sometimes-obscured Clifton and our own beloved May 10 Writers Workshop Patricia Meyer · Christopher Monger · Judith Rascoe holy contour . I hope this issue inspires Oakley Hall III. May 1 for Screenwriting Tom Rickman · Lisa Rosenberg · Tom Schlesinger and helps you to continue through Camille Thomasson · Michael Urban the inevitable losses and gains, the [email protected] celebrations and tragedies, and to PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS: (530) 470-8440 remember that community is essential Sarah Ryan Black · Debbie Brubaker · Graham Leggat to our well-being . www.squawvalleywriters.org Danielle Refrew · Scott Rosenfelt · George Rush —Maxima Kahn Gail Silva · Ron Yerxa maxima@squawvalleywriters .org ~ ~ ~ ~ Lucille Clifton: 1936-2010 Beloved and admired friend and staff member, Lucille Clifton POETRY died Saturday, February 13, 2010. She had been invited back again to Squaw Valley for the summer of 2010 as a Special Guest . We had so looked forward to seeing her again . She had been a regular staff member since 1991 and continued to return almost every other year STAFF NEWS since then . Lucille was a major figure in American letters. She was an award-winning poet, fiction writer and author of children’s books . BOA Editions published her most recent collection, Kazim Ali: Orange Alert: Essays on Evie Shockley: Her second poetry book, Mercy, as well as Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1969-1999, which won the Poetry, Art and the Architecture of the new black, was just released from 2000 National Book Award for Poetry . Two of Clifton’s BOA poetry collections, Good Woman: Silence was published by the University of Wesleyan University Press in March 2011. Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 and Next: New Poems, were chosen as finalists for the Michigan Press in the fall, and Fasting for She also has a book of poetry criticism, Pulitzer Prize in 1988, while Clifton’s The Terrible Stories (BOA) was a finalist for the 1996 Ramadan: Essays on Spiritual Practice Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and National Book Award . Clifton served as Distinguished Professor of Humanities and holder of will be published in April 2011 by Tupelo Formal Innovation in African American the Hilda C. Landers Endowed Chair in the Liberal Arts at St. Mary’s College of Maryland until Press . www .kazimali .com Poetry, forthcoming in the University her retirement in the fall of 2005. She continued to serve St. Mary’s as Professor Emeritus Cornelius Eady: He received an honorary of Iowa Press’s Contemporary North and Friend to the College. She was appointed a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts Doctor of Fine Arts Degree from the American Poetry Series later in the year . and Sciences, and elected as Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 1999 . In 2007 University of Rochester . C.D. Wright: Her collection One With she was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, which honors a living U .S . poet whose lifetime Forrest Gander: He has a book of poems Others (Copper Canyon Press) was a accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition . This year, 2010, she was awarded the finalist for the National Book Awards. Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America to honor “distinguished lifetime service to and two books of translations coming out American poetry .” in Spring 2011: Core Samples from the Robert Hass: His most recent volume, World (poetry, photos, haibun) from New The Apple Trees at Olema: New and At the Poetry Workshop in Squaw Valley, she was a warm and wise presence, a listener Directions; Watchword, Poems of Pura Selected Poems, was published by Ecco in Lopez Colome from Wesleyan; Spectacle spring 2010 . He selected the poems, wrote as well as a storyteller . She wrote new poems each day along with the other staff poets and & Pigsty, Poems of Kiwao Nomura from the introduction, and with Paul Ebenkamp participants, and even her rough drafts were fine examples of her work. Lucille composed her OmniDawn. His poem “Witness” was set provided annotations for “Song of Myself” daily poems on a typewriter, working on one of Oakley Hall’s shabby IBM Selectrics. to “PoemFlow,” available as an Itunes app: for a new edition of Song of Myself: And www.poemflow.com/776 Other Poems by Walt Whitman, published We still remember her final poem of the 2008 week, how it achieved what Lucille’s work in February by Counterpoint.