omnium gatherum & newsletter 2 0 1 1 - 2 0 1 2 i s s u e 1 6 COMMUNITY OF WRITERS AT SQUAW VALLEY OUR SUPPORTERS OMNIUM GATHERUM & NEWSLETTER TABLE 2011-2012, Issue 16 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 The many friends of the Community of P.O. Box 1416, Nevada City, CA 95959 Writers and its Scholarship Fund CONTENTS E-mail: brett@squawvalleywriters .org University of California/ Irvine for www .squawvalleywriters .org scholarships for UCI MFAs UC/ Riverside for scholarships for UCR Newsletter edited and designed by MFAs Maxima Kahn Click on an item below to go directly to that page with support and advice from Fresno State University Announcing Our 2012 Summer Programs . .4 Brett Hall Jones National Endowment for the Arts The Academy Foundation of The Note from the Editor . .5 BOARD OF DIRECTORS Academy of Motion Picture Arts & C .D . Wright Receives Lenore Marshall Award . .6 President James Naify Sciences Vice President Joanne Meschery The Anne & Gordon Getty Foundation Dean Young Gets a New Heart . .6 Secretary Eddy Ancinas The LEF Foundation Poetry Staff News . .7 Financial OfficerBurnett Miller Squaw Valley Ski Corporation Osvaldo Ancinas Participant Profile: Sarah Maclay . .10 The San Francisco Foundation Jan Buscho PoetWatch: Poetry Participant News . .11 Max Byrd The Bookshelf Bookstores Alan Cheuse The Depot Bookstore Summer 2011 Special Thanks and Gallery of Photos . .20 Mark Childress For major contributions to the Screenwriting Staff News . .22 Nancy Cushing Community of Writers and its Rene Encinas Endowment: Participant Profile: Gayla Kraetsch Hartsough . .23 Richard Ford Anonymous Screenwriting Participant News . .24 Diana Fuller Lou DeMattei & Amy Tan Barbara Hall Published Alumni Reading Series . .28 Edwina Leggett Lucinda Watson Michael Pietsch Sounds of Summer 2011: Music Heard in the Office . .29 Christopher Sindt ABOUT OUR ADVERTISERS Malcolm Margolin: Heydey Books . .30 Amy Tan John C . Walker The ads which appear in this issue represent Random Writing Tips from Squaw . .31 Lucinda Watson the work of Community of Writers staff and Writers Workshop Staff News . .33 Harold Weaver participants . These ads help to defray the Al Young cost of the newsletter . If you have a recent or Ron Carlson: from Room Service, Prose Poems . .39 forthcoming book, please contact us about In Memoriam: Henry Carlisle . .40 THE WORKSHOPS advertising in our next annual issue. Executive Director Brett Hall Jones Contact Maxima Kahn for a Rate Sheet Writers Workshop Participant News . .43 Writers Workshops: and more information: (530) 273-3566 Remembering Blair Fuller . .60 Lisa Alvarez or [email protected] Louis B. Jones or visit: www .squawvalleywriters .org A Letter from Brett . .61 Michael Carlisle Poetry Robert Hass Participant Profile: Lisa Tucker . .62 PLEASE NOTE: We are not able to fact-check Screenwriting Diana Fuller the submitted news. We apologize if any You Might Want To Consider: Magazines to Submit To . .63 incorrect information is published. Contributors This Issue . .63 ~ ~ 20i2 A Note from the Editor COMMUNITY elcome to the Omnium our hope that you find some sense of POETRY WORKSHOP: JUNE 23-30 Gatherum & Newsletter! community in these pages and that you I hope you find our latest also join us this summer for a much Kazim Ali • Robert Hass • Sharon Olds W issue informative, engaging and deeper experience of the Community OF WRITERS Claudia Rankine • C.D. Wright enjoyable. In addition to the usual of Writers. —Maxima Kahn remarkable smorgasborg of news [email protected] WRITERS WORKSHOPS: July 7 - 14 from past participants and staff, which Max Byrd • Ron Carlson • Mark Childress shows us that the publishing of worthy Bernard Cooper • John Daniel • Gill Dennis literature is definitely still happening Glen David Gold • Sands Hall and interesting film projects are being Dana Johnson • Louis B. Jones • Joanne Meschery made, we also have some profiles of Varley O’Connor • Victoria Patterson • Jason Roberts past participants to inspire you, and Robin Romm • Gregory Spatz • Lisa Tucker some fun articles, some remembrances, photos, musical tips and more. Just Send Andrew Winer • Al Young Squaw Valley enough to give you a leisurely few Literary Agents • Book & Literary Magazine Editors Us coffee breaks and then we hope you’ll Your and more get back to writing! California PUBLISHED ALUMNI: News! Ramona Ausubel • Heather Donahue I want to extend a special thanks to SUMMER Susan Henderson • Krys Lee • Ismet Prcic those who make it possible for us to Scott Sparling • Mary Volmer publish the Omnium each year by PAST PARTICIPANT OR STAFF? advertising in our pages . We are very Do you have news you would like us WRITING PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS: grateful for your support . to include in the next newsletter? The Charmaine Craig • Susan Golomb • Rhoda Huffey Omnium is published once a year . We WORKSHOPS Michelle Latiolais • Mike Levine • Alison Owings We all know that writing is a solitary print publishing credits, awards and Amy Tan • Oscar Villalon activity. Yet, at the same time, writing similar new writing-related achieve- Financial Aid available is a form of communication with at ments, and also include births. News least one intended reader, even if that should be from the past year only. Application Deadlines SCREENWRITING: July 7 - 14 Production commitments will determine the reader is only imagined. Balancing the Please compose it in third person, us- availability of staff members and guests. April 2 for all programs need for solitude and for community is ing complete sentences . Deadline: Eugene Corr • Jacob Forman • Pamela Gray a challenge that faces every artist . We October 1, 2012 for next issue. Patricia Meyer • Christopher Monger • Judith Rascoe cannot neglect the communal aspect Tom Rickman • Lisa Rosenberg Tom Schlesinger of writing if we expect our writing We dedicate this issue of the Camille Thomasson • Michael Urban to continue to flourish. In the lively Omnium Gatherum & Newsletter [email protected] exchange of ideas and expression, in PLUS SPECIAL GUESTS: to the memory of our co-founder (530) 470-8440 the daring act of sharing our words, we Blair Fuller and to the memory of Sarah Ryan Black • Linda Blackaby grow, learn, are shaped and enriched dear friend and colleague Henry Debbie Brubaker • Vivian Kleiman • Scott Rosenfelt www.squawvalleywriters.org by our confluence with others. It is Carlisle. George Rush • Gail Silva • Ron Yerxa ~ ~ ~ ~ C.D. Wright Receives Lenore Marshall Award In August, Squaw Valley staff member C.D. Wright’s One With Others was awarded the 2011 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, which is given by the Academy of American Poets in recognition of the most POETRY outstanding book of poetry published in the previous year . Poets Mei- mei Berssenbrugge, D.A. Powell, and Martha Ronk were the judges. STAFF NEWS Chronicling her mentor ‘V,’ the only white woman to join a protest march through Arkansas in 1969, the book has been described by judge Martha Ronk as “passionate, funny, and elegiac…Wright’s graceful and startling ability to move seamlessly from the elegant to Photo: Tracy E. Hall Kazim Ali: In 2011 Tupelo Press published haibun) was published by New Directions the down-to-earth, from racial history to the cost of a head of lettuce, his new book Fasting for Ramadan: Notes in June and has been nominated for the and from her words to the words of others creates an all-encompassing world including both V’s from a Spirtual Practice . Also in 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award. His feisty heroism—’Just to act, was the glorious thing’—and ‘the long-lingering olfaction of home, translations of the poems of Pura Lopez whether from the faint cut of walnuts spoiled in the grass or a sour work shirt on a rotted railing’ . Omnidawn published his translation of Colome, Watchword, was published by Wright describes V as a mind on fire; as readers we witness this throughout: ‘Harry says, What Iranian poet Sohrab Sepehri’s poem Water’s Wesleyan University Press in February we really want from our time on this planet, is that which is not this, we want the ethical this; we Footfall. In spring 2012 the University of 2012 . His translation of Spectacle & Pigsty, want to feel and transmit .” Michigan Press will publish Jean Valentine: This-world Company, edited by Kazim Ali Poems of Kiwao Nomura was released by OmniDawn in September . About poetry, Wright has remarked: “Poetry is a necessity of life. and John Hoppenthaler . It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be Jimmy Santiago Baca: His newest Robert Hass: What Light Can Do: Essays free, and declare them so.” collection, Breaking Bread with the on Art, Imagination, and the Natural Darkness: Book 1: The Esai Poems, was World will be published by Ecco Press/ published by Sherman Asher in April . He HarperCollins in May . co-authored, with ReLeah Cosset Lent, Cathy Park Hong: Her third collection, Dean Young Gets a New Heart Adolescents On The Edge, a guidebook for Engine Empire will be released by Norton teaching at-risk adolescents. (Heinemann, in May . The summer issue of the Paris This past April was eventful for Dean Young . After a decade of Photo: Tracy E. Hall 2011) . Daniel Califf-Glick is directing a Review included a series of her poems . living with a degenerative heart condition he received a heart transplant . A few days later his latest feature length documentary based on Yusef Komunyakaa: His latest collection collection, Fall Higher, was published by Copper Canyon Press . Baca’s memoir, A Place to Stand (www . of poems, The Chameleon Couch, was aplacetostandmovie .com) . released by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in In Fall Higher Dean confronts death.