Online, and year-round, The Writers’ Annex is made up of short courses, seminars, workshops, and more. Our vision is to bring the creative insight and experience of our staff poets and prose writers to our community in all seasons, not just in the summertime, and not just here in the valley. Online offerings address topics such as eco-poetics, translation, and generative sessions. Some are be one or two days, some are weekend intensives, and some meet weekly for a month or two.
Some of our offerings are for writers, and others for readers and those who study the written word. We learned from our two years of offerings from the Virtual Valley that opportunities like this can be crucial for participants who aren’t in an academic setting, and who can’t make a week-long trip to the Sierra whether because of mobility, financial, employment, or familial constraints. We see The Writers’ Annex as a bridge for them.
Our first offering from The Writers’ Annex was in poetry: a short course called “Reading Milosz, by Robert Hass.” Since then we have produced a short course on the poet Lucille Clifton – a long time Community of Writers staff member – led by her friend and Community of Writers Alum and Staff Member Kazim Ali. later, we offered a five-part course on T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, led by Robert Hass and CoW Poetry Director Brenda Hillman.
In 2023 we will be producing four new short courses, and we will be building a new platform for self-guided short courses: The Annex Library.