2022 Poetry Teaching Staff Information

We are so happy you will join us on staff summer 2022!

Camille Dungy • Robert Hass • Brenda Hillman
Major Jackson • Ada Limón • Matthew Zapruder

and Special Guest Sharon Olds

This webpage is here for your information. If you have any questions, please let Brett know.

Page updated June 9, 2022

How to Use This Page:

Please review information on this page, and feel free to return to the page as needed. You may want to bookmark it in your web-browser.

What to expect of the Poetry week:

The Poetry Program is founded on the belief that when poets gather in a community to write new poems, each poet may well break through old habits and write something stronger and truer than before. To help this happen we work together to create an atmosphere in which everyone might feel free to try anything. In the mornings we meet in workshops to read to each other the work of the previous twenty-four hours. Each morning session will have roughly 12 participants, and participant poets will have an opportunity to work with each of the six staff poets during the week (except Sharon who won’t be leading those sessions). Each afternoon except Wednesday and Saturday, two or three staff poets will hold a consulting hour. During this hour, six minutes conferences will be held. These brief individual conferences are meant to address the poems participants are writing that day. Each day there will be a late afternoon craft talk. Dress is casual. Weather can be changeable, so pack accordingly. (See “What to Bring,” below.)

After lunch there is ample time to write, but poets may feel beckoned by the mountains and creeks nearby. Each afternoon, one of the staff poets will give a talk on craft.

View /Print Schedule of Events

Please note: Schedule may change slightly between now and June 18. You will receive a packet on arrival which will contain a schedule and a morning workshop schedule.

Olympic Valley, CA

Olympic Valley is a valley California Sierra Nevada, close to the north shore of Lake Tahoe. Our gathering held in the si are there, now called Palisades Tahoe, It was the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics. Palisades Tahoe provides venues for our programs each summer. Many of our events take place in the Olympic House, the lodge at the foot of the ski area.

Summers are warm and sunny; participants and teaching staff will have opportunities to hike to the local waterfalls, take guided nature walks up the mountain, swim in Lake Tahoe, or bike along the Truckee River.

In summer, the weather is changeable; days are usually warm/hot and dry (72°- 87°) and nights are cool (40°- 50°). The elevation of the valley floor is 6200 feet. This coming week is cooling off though, so bring layers.

When checking weather or directions online, please note that you should use the zip code 96146.

Our Name:

Some time ago, we changed the name by dropping the long-used place name for where we hold our summer writing workshops. We recognize this name has a painful and derogatory legacy which has been disrespectful to the Native American community. We are now known as the Community of Writers. The ski area is now called Palisades Tahoe. We will call the place Olympic Valley or just the Valley. For years writers have used the old name as short-hand to refer to our Writing Workshops in the summer. We hope you will join us and choose not to use the name in that context.

Covid 19

The Community of Writers is committed to protecting the health of our participants, teaching staff, employees, and visitors. This summer, we will follow or exceed the established protocols from Placer County, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), and ask that you do the same. CW will continue to assess the evolving public health guidance regarding large gatherings and adapt accordingly. We are requiring proof of vaccination and any relevant boosters from our participants. For our staff, we understand you are all vaccinated.

With the spread of this new variant, we have determined that masks must be worn indoors at all times. We will have most morning sessions and group meetings outdoors in the shade, when possible. We will have fans and portable air-purifiers on site as well as masks, hand-sanitizer, rapid tests.

To limit your exposure we urge you to limit your activities in the 7 days before the week begins. Consider not attending parties or films, for instance, where you might be exposed. In the week before you travel here, please wear a mask when in public and in public transportation. Please wear a mask on the airplane or if carpooling, during the car ride up. We fervently hope we can gather together to make poetry and new friendships without COVID joining us.

Typical Daily Schedule

8:00 – 9:30 Poetry Elves collect and photocopy poems for the Morning Sessions
9:30 Staff Poets send or bring poems in to be copied; pick up poems to take to Morning Session.
10:00 – 12:00 Morning Sessions
3:30-5:00 Sharon Olds Workshop
4:00 – 5:00 First Aid (Your schedule will be available on arrival. )
5:30 – 6:30 Craft Talk (Except Wednesday when it will be at 12:30 pm)
6:30 Dinner

Wednesday afternoon and evening are a break in the usual schedule. We have our lunch-time craft talk scheduled at 12:30 pm, after that we have no other afternoon events scheduled. Instead, we all go to Lake Tahoe for a softball game, or a wild flower walk and BBQ at Meeks Bay.

Thursday evening is the Staff Poetry Reading. You may plan to read for about 12 minutes. The reading will take place outdoors, so wear a sweater.

Morning Sessions

The emphasis is on generating new work. We ask all participants including the staff to bring a draft of a new poem to a Morning Session every day during the week. The Morning Sessions (groups 0f 12) meet from 10:00 – noon each morning and the poets read each other their new drafts and give and get feedback with the understanding that these are drafts, not necessarily finished poems.

We have an efficient system for printing and/or photocopying your daily poems for the Morning Session. We recommend you bring your own laptop. However, there are several computers available for the typing of poems, if needed. We can print from most PC and Apple applications, but we prefer Microsoft Word or PDF. You may email your poem to us each morning, or walk your poem into the office on a USB flash-drive.

Morning Session Schedule

You will be asked to lead a Morning Session on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday mornings from 10:00 – noon. The Morning Session on the final Saturday is held early and tends to be over by 10:30 am, due to its being a travel day. Most of the 72 Poetry participants will cycle through the Morning Sessions you lead, so that by the end of the week you will have worked with almost every participant.

Craft Talk

Please plan a 45-50 minute talk to present during the week on some aspect of craft. Let us know if you have a preference. If you will have hand-outs, please email those to us in advance for copying.

Schedule of Craft Talks (TBD)

Sunday: Brenda
Monday: Major
Tuesday: Camille
Wednesday: Matthew
Thursday: Ada
Friday: Bob

Bookshop

We create a bookshop for the week in our Tiny House on Wheels. We have ordered your books based the information you gave us in December. If you have a new title we should be aware of, please let us know. We will also have t-shirts, book bags and water bottles available.

Poetry First Aid

At 4 pm each day a few staff poets hold very brief (6 minute) individual conference sessions so that participants can ask specific questions about current poems. You can expect to hold a consulting hour 3 or 4 days during the week. (Schedule will be available on arrival.)

Lodging

During the week of the conference, you and the other staff members will be staying at the SV Lodge, which is just a few steps from the conference center. These rooms are very nice and have small kitchens and living areas. You can visit them on the web.

S*** Valley Lodge
201 S*** Peak Road, Olympic Valley, CA 96146
(530) 583-5500

Food

Dinner will be served most days on the Deck of the Olympic House Lodge immediately following the Craft Talk. We accommodate most special diets including vegan and gluten-free.

We set up a very simple snack bar in the conference center each morning: Coffee, juice, yogurt, hardboiled eggs and muffins are provided daily.

We will provide you with staples for your condo during the week such as coffee, tea, bread, orange juice and milk. There is a variety of restaurants in the Village, in Tahoe City (five miles away) and in Truckee (ten miles away).

View/Print Dinner Menu

Benefit Poetry Reading: Thursday, June 23 2022 (During the week)

Thank you for participating in the Benefit Reading. It will be held during the Poetry week, Thursday night, June 23, in the Olympic House More details to come. Proceeds from the Benefit will go to the 2023 Community of Writers Poetry Scholarship Fund, which will grant partial tuition waivers to help talented poets attend. This event will be live-streamed. Please help us by sharing with your friends or social media networks.

Staff Meeting/Lunch

Brenda would like the staff to meet for lunch on Saturday afternoon at 2:00 pm at PlumpJack, which is just steps from the Lodge. Please make sure you have arrived in the valley early enough to make that meeting. More details later on.

Travel

Olympic Valley is located near the North Shore of Lake Tahoe, a four-hour drive from the Bay Area and a one-hour drive from the Reno Airport. It may be necessary for you to fly into Reno, and then drive to Olympic Valley.

We ask that are in Olympic Valley no later than 1:00 pm on June 18. Hotel check-in is often not available until late in the afternoon, so we suggest you deposit your luggage at the front desk of the Lodge so you are free to explore the valley.

Some folks may fly home from Reno International airport on the final Saturday. Please do not book your airline tickets without confirming with Brett first.

Driving Directions

Be careful when you use internet mapping services such as Siri, Google Maps, or MapQuest or you might end up in Fresno, a house in Alpine Meadows, or taking the long way around Lake Tahoe! We recommend you use our directions, below.

Print Driving Directions from Bay Area Print Driving Directions from Reno Airport

THE OLYMPIC HOUSE, our headquarters for the week, is just across the lawn from the SV Lodge. You will see signs for the Community of Writers. Feel free to check into the Lodge, and then come over to the office and we will direct you to Plump Jack.

Taxes

We are required to send you (and the IRS) a 1099 for your honorarium. Your honorarium for the week will be $3,500 plus a stipend of $250.00 for your breakfasts and lunches for the week in the Valley.

If you haven’t already, please complete the W-9 Form. You may choose, instead, to provide us with your tax information in the online Staff Information Form. (We have all tax info for our 2022 Staff Poets.)The state of California requires that any out-of-state contractors who earn more than $1500 in a year must have taxes withheld. We must file a Form 592 Resident and Nonresident Withholding Statement. If we pay nonresident independent contractors or recipients of rents and royalties, the payee receives 93% of the total and we must keep 7% to remit to the State on September 17th. If you believe you are exempt from withholding, you can complete Form 590. The form explains who is exempt, etc.

What to Bring:

Print List

1) You might want to bring something special to wear for the Poetry Reading on Thursday night.
2) A warm jacket or sweater for evenings. We hope it rains a bit, so bring a light raincoat.
3) Tools for writing: Your choice of laptop, discs, USB flash drive, or pad & pencil etc. See “Writing” section above.
4) Favorite reference book or app.
5) Hiking or walking shoes.
6) A swimsuit (if you wish).
7) A sun hat & sunglasses.
8) Sunscreen & lip balm.
9) A water bottle as we discourage the use of water in disposable plastic bottles, although we will have some in the bookshop.
10) Consider bringing a flashlight.
11) Mosquito repellent.
12) A cell phone and charger or phone-card for making long-distance calls.
13) Softball players: bring a mitt.
14) If it promises to be hot and you are driving, consider a personal fan.
15) If you are bringing a laptop, bring a surge-protector and back up your files before your trip.
16) If you have food allergies, bring food to supplement the dinners we provide.
17) Our directions.

Reimbursements

Your reasonable travel costs to the Benefit and to Olympic Valley will be reimbursed. As we are on a tight budget, please help us keep expenses as low as possible.

Bookshop and Your Books

Every summer, the Community of Writers creates a popup bookstore for the week of the Poetry Workshop. The bookshop will be open for the convenience of participants and staff. Because we run our own bookshop, we will be somewhat limited in the number of titles we can carry. However, please make sure to provide a list of up to three titles for us to order for the bookshop. If books are no longer in print, you can always bring (or ship) books to consign.

Code of Conduct

The Community of Writers will not tolerate any instances of discrimination, harassment, or any other form of mistreatment in conjunction with any of our programs. Respect and consideration for others, both within and outside our sessions, are core values to be upheld by all participants and teaching staff. Harassment or disrespect of community members on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, marital status or disability is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Should a staff member, volunteer or program participant be found to violate any aspect of the organization’s code of conduct, the Community of Writers reserves the right to dismiss her or him from the program.

Contact:

Community of Writers
PO Box 2352
Olympic Valley, CA 96146
Brett at communityofwriters dot org
Office: 530-583-5200
Cell: 530-205-8779

Alumni

You may be interested in our alumni. Please visit our Omnium Gatherum Alumni News page. You can view just poets by selecting Poets from the left-side panel.

And please visit our impressive Notable Alumni Poets page.

Poetry Review

An annual poetry anthology is published each year of poems written during the week in the Valley. It is compiled and edited by volunteer editors from the ranks of that year’s participants. We hope you will submit poems when the time comes.

Items Below Completed

Donations/Scholarships

We have an extensive scholarship program and we are always in need of more funding. If you are interested in donating a portion of your honorarium, we would be very grateful. All donations are tax-deductible.

Refer students and colleagues

I hope that you will encourage talented poets you know to apply. And please let me know if there is someone in particular we should look out for, or someone you would like to recommend for a scholarship.

Reading Submissions

We will be receiving applications to the Poetry Workshop until the deadline. In order to make sure that the workshop includes work from a broad spectrum of tastes, we hope each of you will read 1/6 of the submissions. Each submission is generally 4 -5 pages of poems. Please mark it in your calendars for 2022: You can expect to receive 35 – 50 submissions the week of March 28. (Usually the number is about 35.) We ask that you supply Brenda Hillman with the ranking of your favorite applicants by April 10; please provide a numerical ranking of your top 15 applicants. It is especially helpful if you use these numerical rankings. We would like to thank you in advance for doing this important work.

What We Need From You ASAP by December 21, 2021

Read and print your Engagement Contract (attached to the email you just received). Either sign it digitally in the online form (below), or return it to our Nevada City address, signed.
We will need a brief biographical sketch and a photo of you by December 28. You may submit your bio when completing the online form (below).
If you are new to our staff, or have recently moved, please submit a new W-9 form. You may also skip the W-9 and provide tax information on the online form (below).
Complete the Staff Information Form by December 28, 2021
Please download and read the following documents: