Each quarter we are pleased to highlight some of the books published by members of our community. For a full chronology of alumni news, visit our Omnium Gatherum & Alumni News page, which is always up to date with the latest alumni news.
Are you an alum of the summer workshops or a former teaching staff member? Do you have news to share? You can send us your news any time here.
Our seventeenth issue of the OGQ (Omnium Gatherum Quarterly) features essays and stories by Lauren Hohle, Alix Christie, Maw Shein Win, Sameer Pandya, Robert Hass, and Lindsey Steffes, an op-ed by Héctor Tobar, an interview with Lynne Thompson, and book excerpts by Sandra Scofield and Thomas Lutz.
On the eve of the centenary publication of The Weary Blues, Langston Hughes’s debut volume of poetry, we are proud to present, “I, Too, Sing America.” We celebrate Langston Hughes’s life as an essential poet, playwright, memoirist, translator, and central figure of the Harlem Renaissance.
A writer who found inspiration in everyday people, their customs and music, Hughes’ evolution as a cultural and political writer inspired generations of writers on multiple continents. This short course will close read his most important and some obscure poems while addressing his significance as an American writer who, along with his contemporaries, first ushered in the possibilities of literature to address the dreams, aspirations, and political freedom of human beings around the globe. In addition, we will also discuss several prose works by Hughes that dramatize his perspectives on the complex dynamics between Black artists and their expanding readerships, consuming audiences, and structures of support in the twentieth century.
The much-beloved longtime member of our Community of Writers, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, died at age 90 in December. Some of us saw our friend Jeanne most recently at the 2023 memorial for her good friend and ours, Al Young. Al was legendary pals with both Jeanne and her husband, novelist James D. Houston, her writing collaborator for her landmark Farewell to Manzanar.
We will miss Jeanne, whose life and work were as impressive as they were inspiring. Her cultural and political influence was undisputed. We were fortunate to know her through the decades as she returned to Olympic Valley for the workshop week— welcomed back by CW founders Barbara and Oakley Hall — often arriving at the end of the week for the Follies and parties, staying over at the Von der Ahe staff house on the Truckee River with Jim, Al Young, Alan Cheuse, and others.
In 2003, during our summer programs, Jeanne led a memorable evening presentation on Farewell to Manzanar, when she and Jim celebrated its 30th Anniversary. Farewell to Manzanar, published in 1973, was a seminal work which explores the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. It tells the personal story of Jeanne and her family’s three-year internment in the Manzanar camp in California.
It isn’t until halfway into Richard Sandomir’s New York Times obituary of Jeanne, that readers find this: “Farewell to Manzanar has sold 1.6 million copies domestically, according to its publisher, HarperCollins.” Talk about burying the lede! The obituary reviews her family’s experience at the Manzanar concentration camp, her education and writing life, her family with Jim Houston, including photos by Ansel Adams and family.
The memoir became a classic of American history, part of the teaching canon, adopted in many K-12, high school, community college and university curricula. In 1977, Jeanne and Jim collaborated with Jim Korty to adapt the book into a film which won the Humanitas prize for teleplay.
Jeanne went on to write a novel, The Legend of Fire Horse Woman, and an essay and story collection, Beyond Manzanar and other views of Asian-American Womanhood. She contributed to Don’t Cry, It’s Only Thunder (Paul G. Hemsler) as well as received accolades including the Japanese American of the Biennium Award for achievement in Arts, Literature and Communication, and the National Women’s Political Caucus’s Women of Achievement Award. In 2019, she was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.
“You cannot deport 110,000 people unless you have stopped seeing individuals,” she wrote in her most famous work, a book that still has lessons to teach America.
Donors who wish to honor her may contribute to the Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston Memorial Scholarship fund to bring talented Asian writers to the workshops.
Each quarter we are pleased to highlight some of the books published by members of our community. For a full chronology of alumni news, visit our Omnium Gatherum & Alumni News page, which is always up to date with the latest alumni news.
Are you an alum of the summer workshops or a former teaching staff member? Do you have news to share? You can send us your news any time here.
We are pleased to announce that author Margaret Wilkerson Sexton has been elected to serve as Vice President of our Board of Directors. Margaret has regularly taught fiction at our summer workshops, and has served as a member of our board for since 2020. We are honored and delighted that she will be stepping into this leadership position.
We look forward to working with Margaret as we move into the next chapter of this organization.
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her most recent novel, On The Rooftop, was a 2022 Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick. Her second novel, The Revisioners, won a 2020 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work and was a national bestseller as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, was long-listed for the National Book Award. She lives in Oakland with her family.
We are delighted to announce our 54th annual summer workshops season!
Applications are open for our 2025 summer writing workshops in Olympic Valley. The gatherings are for poets and writers, and include workshops, panel discussions, and craft talks as well as special interest classes.
The Community of Writers was founded half a century ago by California writers Blair Fuller and Oakley Hall, who wished to foster a literary culture in the West that would be conversant with the publishing establishment of the East Coast.
The Poetry Workshop will be held June 21-27, 2025. The program admits 70 talented poets into the week-long program. Directed by Brenda Hillman, this program fosters poets as they produce new work each day. Participating poets meet daily in session to share poems written during the previous 24 hours. Poets attend daily craft talks by the teaching staff poets, and meet in brief one-on-one sessions with staff poets. The week culminates in a public benefit poetry reading featuring the staff poets reading their recent work—sometimes poems written during the week. This year, again, the event will be live-streamed for a local, national and international audience to raise important scholarship funds.
The Writers Workshop will take place July 7-14 and admits up to 110 fiction, nonfiction, and memoir writers. Writers meet in small workshop groups to discuss their submitted manuscript with a member of the teaching staff. The 2025 teaching staff includes fiction and nonfiction writers as well as literary agents and editors working in publishing today. Lectures and panel discussions on the craft of writing, as well as publishing, are offered daily, in addition to staff readings.
All interested writers of prose and poetry are encouraged to apply, though admission is competitive and the writing level is high. No prior publications or academic credits are required; the only criterion for admission is that the applicant submit a sample of original writing. Financial aid is available including scholarships.
We are pleased to announce the 2nd Annual Lucille Clifton Poetry Chair at the Community of Writers! Congratulations to Evie Shockley who will hold the Lucille Clifton Poetry Chair in 2025. We are delighted to be able to bestow this distinction on Evie as she prepares to join us as staff poet at this summer’s Poetry Program in Olympic Valley.
This honor is made possible by a generous donor who is committed to honoring Lucille’s memory as well as her work, values, and influence on poetry.
Each quarter we are pleased to highlight some of the books published by members of our community. For a full chronology of alumni news, visit our Omnium Gatherum & Alumni News page, which is always up to date with the latest alumni news.
Are you an alum of the summer workshops or a former teaching staff member? Do you have news to share? You can send us your news any time here.
Each quarter we are pleased to highlight some of the books published by members of our community. For a full chronology of alumni news, visit our Omnium Gatherum & Alumni News page, which is always up to date with the latest alumni news.
Are you an alum of the summer workshops or a former teaching staff member? Do you have news to share? You can send us your news any time here.
Our sixteenth issue of the OGQ (Omnium Gatherum Quarterly) features essays and stories by Tyler Dilts, Susanne Pari, Andrew Tonkovich, Shi Naseer, Max Byrd, Steve Susoyev, Eugenie Montague, David L. Ulin, and Gina DeMillo Wagner, poems by Hermelinda Hernandez Monjaras, Beverley Bie Brahic, and Ruben Quesada, and watercolor sketches by Janet Fitch.
The OGQ is edited each quarter by Andrew Tonkovich.
Death is the subject of many of the greatest (most moving, innovative, funny, haunting, political, oneiric) Latin American poems of the 20th century, from José Gorostiza’s Death without End to Gabriela Mistral’s “Death Sonnets,” from Xavier Villaurrutia’s Nostalgia for Death to María Rivera’s “The Dead.
What can we learn from that body of poetry that might be generative for our own thinking, feeling, writing? Many philosophers tell us that there is a signal connection between death and “the meaning of life.” What particularities of culture, gender, sexuality, age, faith or experience might account for the visionary clarity of death as constant companion or permeable border, etc. in Latin American poetry? Why are death poems so common in those cultures? Is it connected to traumatic resonances from the conquest? Does it go back to Maya, Aztec, or Incan cultural traditions? With what kinds of syntax, sound, image, structure, and vocabulary is death treated? How different are the cultural contexts from country to country? And why did we once think that only men seem to write them?
With our summer workshops behind us, we are delighted to report that this was a particularly wonderful summer of poetry and prose. We saw rain, lightning, wind, and thunder, June nights below freezing and 90+ degree days in July, and the smoke from a fire on Donner Summit. We also had skies of startling blue and pleasant evenings under the stars. And we saw great writing, hard work, new friendships, peace, respect, and understanding. We saw generosity, patience and kindness. We are so grateful to everyone who joined us.
Our Poetry Program in June provided participants and staff poets the space and the time to write new poems—and some remarkable poems were written. Our photocopy machine was busy printing copies for each morning session. Our annual Benefit Poetry Reading was a hybrid event – both online and in-person under the stars. (You can watch the recording here.) We hiked among waterfalls and plunged into the icy waters of Lake Tahoe, had a raucous tie-game of Poetry Softball this year that also featured a surprise visit from a coyote. As is the tradition, on the final night poets recited their favorite poems from memory.
Our Writers’ Workshop week was packed with literary events and community. Through workshops, individual conferences, craft talks and panels, as well as three special workshops (Finding the Story, Adaptation, and Open Workshop), our “You Must Read This” event, and a brilliant nonfiction evening on the deck of the Paul Radin Memorial Dream Wagon, participants benefited from packed days of literary opportunities. And for the first time, we created a podcast feed where anyone could keep up with the afternoon events. We were proud to celebrate published alums and enjoyed listening to readings from their newly published works and their memories of their time at the Community of Writers.
As such, we need to acknowledge people who made it possible.
We are grateful to Palisades Tahoe, who has partnered with us to ensure that we can stay in our valley home of more than fifty years. Christine Horvath, Mike DeGraff, Dee Burne, and Brad Barth on the administrative side, and in the day-to-day the whole food and beverage team who worked so hard to make our workshops work. We also would like to thank Rocky and Katja who allowed us to use their premises at Le Chamois.
The greatest debt of gratitude we owe is always to our generous teaching staff members in Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction who make the summer workshops an unforgettable and productive experience. Thanks to our program directors: Lisa Alvarez, Julia Flynn Siler, Sands Hall, Brenda Hillman, and Louis Jones. And thanks in particular to Sands for her leadership and for organizing the fabulous Follies! Thank you as well to Michael Carlisle whose friendship and generosity makes all the difference. And of course, we must thank the incredible Nicholas Nichols (@maruneboy), who captured so many gorgeous photos this summer.
Our Writers’ Workshop week was jam-packed and full of excellent writing. In addition to our workshops craft talks and panels, we had two special workshops (Finding the Story and Adaptation), and for the first time, we created a podcast feed where anyone could access the afternoon events in real time. We hosted a beautiful published alumni reading, and our primary goal, as always, was to facilitate excellent writing through community building, and we are so proud to say that this year was a resounding success.
A big thank you to Patricia K. Meyer and Stacy Spruill who joined us again this summer to teach their special adaptation class, and especially to Diana Fuller, who founded and shepherded this program from a full screenwriting program to an adaptation program for fiction and nonfiction writers. She has been with this organization from the very beginning.
Likewise, Leslie Daniels took up Gill Dennis‘s torch once again this year, leading the beloved Finding the Story Workshop for the second year in a row. Thank you Leslie!
Andrew Tonkovich (our A&R man) was essential every step of the way: from the management of all the manuscripts during registration, to moderating panels, he was central to it all. Year round, Andrew edits the OGQ, hosts the Bibliocracy radio show on our podcast feed, and assists with the planning of the workshops, among many other roles.
Our Elves (and all-around helpers) were Irish Ely, Michaelyn Logue, Emma McCandless, Jaz Nguyen (the printer guru), Rumi Petersen, Gyana Roberts and Kate Rogers. With high energy and good spirits, they all made things happen seamlessly.
Thank you also to Graham Knibb, Lindsey Jones, Tracy Hall, Jim Chumbley, and Dashiell Jones for their support and hard work during the summer. Thanks also to Sands Hall for everything she brings to the workshop week from her Making Workshops Work presentation to The Open Workshop, to her brilliant teaching, and the Follies, which she emcees and puts together.
Thanks to Robert Hass, who directed the Poetry Program for decades, who continues to inspire us, and to Sharon Olds who has been so central to this program for so many decades.
Thanks to Will Richardson for leading such informative Nature Walks during our Poetry week.
The Benefit Poetry Reading raises important scholarship funds which we look to expand each year in the face of rising costs. Thank you to Hunter Jones who made real again our hopes to create a live-streamed event from this beautiful valley; and to Lisa Alvarez, who emceed the event, as well as the seven participating poets: Blas Falconer, Brenda Hillman, Major Jackson, Patricia Spears Jones, Brynn Saito, and Matthew Zapruder. A heartfelt thanks especially to Jared and Julia Drake of Wildbound Media for all of their brilliant work producing the event and immersing our virtual audience in our mountain community. To view the video, click here. We have tremendous gratitude to everyone who came to the event, in person or online, to support this project. Donations welcome. And thank you to our Benefit Sponsors: Copper Canyon, Wesleyan University Press, Word After Word Books, Beers Books, and the Nevada County Arts Council.
We also want to thank Ken Haas, who galvanized us to create the Writers Annex, which brings poetry and literature and world-class teachers into your living rooms, and Brenda Hillman and Lisa Alvarez who have helped create this remarkable program that allows the Community of Writers to continue to produce our summer workshops (affordably) in an increasingly unaffordable environment. With our Paul Radin Memorial Dream Wagon now in its fifth year, we are grateful to Robin Radin and David Radin, and everyone for their contributions to this beautiful tiny house that we now use as a stage, bookstore and year-round office.
We would like to acknowledge our friends and board members, Eddy & Osvaldo Ancinas and Amy Tan & Lou Demattei, who have been tremendously generous with their time and support over the years. We couldn’t ask for a more responsive, generous and wise Board of Directors, especially president Carlin Naify. Thanks as well to board members Katy Hover-Smoot (Katy Hays), Jim Naify, Amy Tan, and Nancy Teichert for pitching in and helping with various events. Thanks also to our Literary Committee: Michael Carlisle, Dana Johnson, Michelle Latiolais, Margaret Wilkserson Sexton, and Oscar Villalon. And thanks to Reagan Arthur, Lester Lennon, and Jason Roberts. We also want to thank Alex Espinoza whose work as a board member has made lasting changes to this organization, which we value so deeply. And gratitude to our friend and board member Steve Rempe, who has done so much for us this year.
Thanks also to alum and friend Bob Austin for his generous wine donation. And thank you to our angel in Tahoe, Alice Calhoun, of Alice’s Mountain Market, who along with her brother Mark, have created the only market in the world where if you tell someone you’re a poet, they’ll give you a discount.
I want to thank my year-round colleagues Hunter Jones and Leah Skoyles who did so much to make these workshops shine. Along with her usual duties, Leah managed our pop-up bookshop as well as deftly organizing the lodging for all the participants and staff. Hunter took on a myriad of roles too numerous to name but included creating COVID-safe pleasant outdoor spaces, devising the sound system, creating the hybrid benefit event, recording and producing podcasts, and so much more. They deserve a restful vacation soon!
We are deeply grateful to our participants and staff, who, all together, bring the magic of the community. You showed care for one another, following our COVID protocols and treating each other with love and respect in the workshops and beyond. Our hope is that you’ve made life-long friends. We are so glad to have had a safe and healthy summer without COVID joining us.
Thank you to the intrepid staff at Palisades Tahoe who made us feel so welcome and taken care of through the week. You rolled with the punches, and the food has never been better.
And to our Donors: What a community this is! Your support is essential to this thing we do. There were many participants whose attendance was made possible specifically because of your support.
Finally, we want to thank our participants who made these workshops so productive through your active participation in building this brief, seasonal community, and for your warmth and good will. We at the Community of Writers can only do so much to create the circumstances of a good workshop session, but ultimately it is our teaching staff and participants who make the week so wonderful.
With love and gratitude,
-Brett Hall Jones
Executive Director
Our fifteenth issue of the OGQ (Omnium Gatherum Quarterly) features essays by R.O. Kwon, Cameron Walker, Sara Ellen Fowler, Dashka Slater, Rosa Lowinger, Jaclyn Moyer, Marguerite L. Harrold, Ismet Prcic, and Jason Roberts, and poems by Armen Davoudian and RJ Ingram.
The OGQ is edited each quarter by Andrew Tonkovich.
Each quarter we are pleased to highlight some of the books published by members of our community. For a full chronology of alumni news, visit our Omnium Gatherum & Alumni News page, which is always up to date with the latest alumni news.
Are you an alum of the summer workshops or a former teaching staff member? Do you have news to share? You can send us your news any time here.
We are pleased to announce our 2024 online offerings in the Writers’ Annex. These several-week virtual courses are open to anyone and aim to be a forum where esteemed poets and writers can teach topics that they love to teach. Courses are intended to facilitate deep, close readings, with expert instruction and additional discussion sections and resources.
Learn more about our upcoming Short Courses Below.
You can also register for all three courses for a $250 discount here.
This spring, Victoria Chang and Matthew Zapruder will lead a five-part course intended to complicate the modern understandings of Sylvia Plath‘s poetry, and distinguish her work from her tragic biography, with an additional session focusing on Plath’s revision.
Starting late August, Peter Orner will reimagine his popular course on James Joyce‘s Ulysses for the Writers’ Annex space. Participants will read Joyce’s challenging novel over seven weeks, focusing on the text itself, Joyce’s humor and grace, and with Orner’s guidance each week.
Heading into the winter, Brenda Hillman and Robert Hass will be leading a course surveying some of Emily Dickinson‘s extraordinary catalogue of work, with particular attention to the poems themselves, but including some biography, letters, critical literature, and awareness of life in 19th century Amherst.
Financial aid is available for those who need it. Contact us for more information.
Our fourteenth issue of the OGQ (Omnium Gatherum Quarterly) features a poetry craft talk by Victoria Chang, essays by Amanda Churchill, Reid Sherline, and Parul Kapur, poems by Yiskah Rosenfeld and Georgia San Li, an op-ed from Tom Zoellner, a selection from a lyric memoir by Jay Aquinas Thompson, and a dispatch on the founding of a new journal by William Ward Butler.
The OGQ is edited each quarter by Andrew Tonkovich.
Our thirteenth issue of the OGQ (Omnium Gatherum Quarterly) features the 2016 Poetry Workshop craft talk by Patricia Spears Jones, essays by Victoria Patterson, Molly Giles, Mary Otis, Mary Camarillo, David Womack, Lauren Hohle, and Sommer Schafer; poetry by Sarah Maclay and Violeta Orozco; and an excerpt from Steve Almond‘s craft book.
The OGQ is edited each quarter by Andrew Tonkovich.
Each quarter we are pleased to highlight some of the books published by members of our community. For a full chronology of alumni news, visit our Omnium Gatherum & Alumni News page, which is always up to date with the latest alumni news.
Are you an alumnus of the summer workshops or a former teaching staff member? Do you have news to share? You can send us your news any time here.
We are proud to announce that these seven special guests will be joining Major Jackson in conversation about the life and work of Community of Writers Poetry Program founder Galway Kinnell as part of the Short Course, That Poetry, By Which I lived.
The short course will take place online Tuesdays and Thursdays from November 30 to December 14. Join us this winter to celebrate the life and poetry of Galway Kinnell with the support of poets. Among them are former students, lifelong friends, and colleagues. With Jackson, they will discuss Kinnell’s influence, craft and the major themes found in his tremendous body of work.
Toi Derricotte‘s sixth collection of poetry, “I“ New and Selected Poems, was shortlisted for the 2019 National Book Award. She was awarded the Pegasus Award from the Poetry Foundation in 2023, the
Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets in 2021, and the Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America in 2020. With Cornelius Eady, she co-founded Cave Canem, a home for the many voices of African American poetry, in 1996. More
Nick Flynn is the author of five books of poetry, four memoirs, a play, a handbook for teaching poetry to young people, as well as a compendium of his artistic collaborations / influences. One of the most inventive writers at work today, his poetry and prose both explore the tenuous membrane that separates our comfortable, everyday existence from the ragged margins of society. The questions he poses are tough and urgent. Flynn teaches creative writing at the University of Houston, and splits his time between Houston and Brooklyn, New York. More
Robert Hass has published many books of poetry including Field Guide, Praise, Human Wishes, Sun Under Wood, and The Apple Trees at Olema: New and Selected Poems. His collection of poems entitled Time and Materials won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He has also written books of essays including Twentieth Century Pleasures, Now & Then, and A Little Book on Form: An Exploration Into the Formal Imagination of Poetry. His book of essays, What Light Can Do: Essays on Art, Imagination, and the Natural World, is the recipient of the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Hass translated many of the works of Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, and he has edited Selected Poems: 1954-1986, by Tomas Transtromer; The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa; Poet’s Choice: Poems for Everyday Life; the 2001 edition of Best American Poetry; and Modernist Women Poets: An Anthology (with Paul Ebenkamp). He wrote the introduction to an edition of selected Walt Whitman poems titled Song of Myself: And Other Poems. He also wrote The Poetic Species: A Conversation with Edward O. Wilson and Robert Hass. His most recent book is Summer Snow: New Poems. He directed the Poetry Program at the Community of Writers for over 20 years.
Edward Hirsch is a celebrated poet and tireless advocate for poetry. His first collection of poems, For the Sleepwalkers (1981), received the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award from New York University and the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets. His second collection, Wild Gratitude (1986), won the National Book Critics Award. He has published eight additional books of poems: The Night Parade (1989), Earthly Measures (1994), On Love (1998), Lay Back the Darkness (2003), Special Orders (2008), The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems (2010), which brings together thirty-five years of poems, Gabriel: A Poem, a book-length elegy for his son (2014), and Stranger by Night (2020).
Hirsch is also the author of seven prose books, including, most recently, 100 Poems to Break Your Heart (2022) and The Heart of American Poetry (2023), as well as A Poet’s Glossary (2014), the result of decades of passionate study, Poet’s Choice (2006), which consists of his popular columns from the Washington Post Book World, and How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry (1999), a national bestseller. He is the editor of Theodore Roethke’s Selected Poems (2005) and co-editor of The Making of a Sonnet: A Norton Anthology (2008). He also edits the series “The Writer’s World” (Trinity University Press).
Edward Hirsch taught for six years in the English Department at Wayne State University and seventeen years in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston. He has been president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation since 2002. More
Tyehimba Jess is the author of two books of poetry, Leadbelly and Olio. Olio won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The Midland Society Author’s Award in Poetry, and received an Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It was also nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Jean Stein Book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Leadbelly was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. The Library Journal and Black Issues Book Review both named it one of the “Best Poetry Books of 2005.”
Jess’ fiction and poetry have appeared in many journals, as well as anthologies such as Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, Beyond The Frontier: African American Poetry for the Twenty-First Century, Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Power Lines: Ten Years of Poetry from Chicago’s Guild Complex, and Slam: The Art of Performance Poetry. More
Sharon Olds has written thirteen books of poetry. Balladz was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Stag’s Leap (2012) received the Pulitzer Prize and England’s T. S. Eliot Prize. Olds holds the Erich Maria Remarque Chair at New York University’s Graduate Program in Creative Writing, where she helped to found workshop programs for residents of Coler-Goldwater Hospital, and for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. More
Lisa Sewell is the author of several books of poems, including Birds of North America, with Susan Hagen and Nathalie Anderson, a pandemic-inspired collaboration that joins art, poetry and the love of birds, Impossible Object, which won the 2014 Tenth Gate prize from The Word Works, as well as The Way Out (Alice James Books) Name Withheld (Four Way Books), and Long Corridor, which received the 2009 Keystone Chapbook award from Seven Kitchens Press. A new book, Mean Season, will be published in June 2024 with The Word Works press. She is also co-editor of several collections of essays on contemporary poetry and poetics, including North American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Beyond Lyric and Language (Wesleyan 2021) with Kazim Ali and American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics (Wesleyan 2007) with Claudia Rankine. She has received grants and awards from the Leeway Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, and held residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Fundacion Valparaiso and The Tyrone Guthrie Center. Recent work is appearing or forthcoming in Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Salamander, Crab Orchard Review and Prairie Schooner. She lives in Philadelphia and teaches at Villanova University. More
Each quarter we are pleased to highlight some of the books published by members of our community. For a full chronology of alumni news, visit our Omnium Gatherum & Alumni News page, which is always up to date with the latest alumni news.
Are you an alumnus of the summer workshops or a former teaching staff member? Do you have news to share? You can send us your news any time here.
Our twelfth issue of the OGQ (Omnium Gatherum Quarterly) features the 2023 Writer’s Workshops opening talk by Oscar Villalon, poetry by Lisa Alvarez and Frank Karioris; essays by Hilary Zaid, Rita Chang-Eppig, Jasmin Hakes, and Stephanie Austin; remembrances of Al Young by Barbara Tannenbaum and Persis Karim; a recipe by Natasha Saje; and a dispatch by Andrew Nicholls.
The OGQ is edited each quarter by Andrew Tonkovich.
Congratulations to these Community of Writers alumni and teaching staff who have published books during the fourth quarter of 2022! We are delighted to share their success with you. You can explore these books by clicking the book cover images below. Support these writers and buy their books!
Visit our Omnium Gatherum to explore all the recent alumni news.
NEW BOOKS FROM WRITERS WORKSHOPS ALUMS & TEACHING STAFF
WRITERS WORKSHOPS – JULY 10-17
We are delighted to announce our fifty-fourth annual summer workshops season!
Applications are open for our 2023 summer writing workshops in Olympic Valley. The gatherings are for serious poets and writers, and include workshops, panel discussions, and craft talks as well as special interest classes.
The Community of Writers was founded over four decades ago by California writers Blair Fuller and Oakley Hall, who wished to foster a literary culture in the West that would be conversant with the publishing establishment of the East Coast.
The Poetry Workshop will be held June 19 – 25, 2023. The program admits 70 serious poets into the week-long program. Directed by Brenda Hillman, this program fosters poets as they produce new work each day. Participating poets meet daily in session to share poems written during the previous 24 hours. Poets attend daily craft talks by the teaching staff poets, and meet in brief one-on-one sessions with staff poets. In addition, Sharon Olds will lead afternoon sessions. The week culminates in a public benefit poetry reading featuring the staff poets reading their recent work—sometimes poems written during the week. This year, again, the event will be live-streamed for a local, national and international audience to raise important scholarship funds.
The Writers Workshop will take place July 10 – 17 and accepts up to 110 fiction, nonfiction, and memoir writers. Writers meet in small workshop groups to discuss their submitted manuscript with a member of the teaching staff. The 2023 teaching staff includes fiction and nonfiction writers as well as literary agents and editors working in publishing today. Lectures and panel discussions on the craft of writing, as well as publishing, are offered daily, in addition to staff readings.
All interested writers of prose and poetry are encouraged to apply, though admission is competitive and the writing level is high. No prior publications or academic credits are required; the only criterion for admission is that the applicant submit a sample of their original writing. Financial aid is available including scholarships for the underepresented.
Congratulations to these Community of Writers alumni and teaching staff who have published books during the third quarter of 2022! We are delighted to share their success with you. You can explore these books by clicking the book cover images below. Support these writers and buy their books!
Special congratulations to staff members Ada Limón who was named U.S. Poet Laureate in July, and Sharon Olds who won a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and published her new collection Balladz (Knopf), which is a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry.
Congratulations to Karen Joy Fowler whose novel Booth made the Booker Prize Long-List, and to Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, whose new novel On the Rooftop was named a Reese’s Book Club Pick.
Visit our Omnium Gatherum to explore all the recent alumni news.
Congratulations to these Community of Writers alum and teaching staff who have published books during the first quarter of 2022! We are delighted to share their success with you. You can explore these books by clicking the book cover images below. Support these writers and buy their books!
Visit our Omnium Gatherum to explore all the recent alumni news.
Spring has sprung. Workshop applications are in, taxes filed, boosters available, wildflowers abloom, and the new OGQ…live. This issue of our online Community of Writers journal presents some of the best recent prose and poetry by alums, offered in celebration of their most recent publications. Do check out their full bios and by all means do purchase their work.
Meanwhile, award-winning short story writer Mary Kuryla shares a chapter from her newest, a debut novel. Poet Lester Graves Lennon memorializes state-sanctioned racist murder but also the life of our own Community of Writers legend Lucille Clifton: “Oceans remember,” indeed! Novelist Rhoda Huffey gamely engages her wild dreamlife, laugh-out-loud creative insights into perhaps the writing of her 31 Paradiso. Patricia Dunn considers the inspiration, perspective, and timing required to grow as a writer, with a shout-out to activist-writer hero Grace Paley herself. Poet and anthology editor Emily Perez meditates on what’s required to assemble an anthology on motherhood, a standout collection which features, happily, many Community of Writers alums! Author and activist Ellen Bravo delivers one of many real-life episodes of struggle included in her decades-spanning survey of American peace, justice and labor rights organizing, Standing Up: Tales of Struggle.
We offer hearty congratulations to all as we struggle, together, to affirm, create, and realize the best of our collective imaginings and re-imaginings.
Andrew Tonkovich
Editor, OGQ
WRITERS WORKSHOPS – JULY 18-25
This will be a particularly special year for the Community of Writers. We had intended to celebrate our fiftieth anniversary with all of you in our valley two years ago. While the past two years have been incredibly difficult for our Community, we also feel that we have demonstrated a capacity to come together as poets and writers regardless of our circumstances.
This will be our fifty-third year as a Community, but our fiftieth year together in our valley.
The Poetry Workshop 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. The idea is to try to expand the boundaries of what one can write. In the mornings we meet to read to each other the work of the previous twenty-four hours, and in the late afternoons we gather for a conversation about some aspect of craft.
The Writers Workshops assist serious writers by exploring the art and craft as well as the business of writing. The week offers daily morning workshops, craft lectures, panel discussions on editing and publishing, staff readings, as well as brief individual conferences. The morning workshops are led by staff writer-teachers, editors, or agents. There are separate morning workshops for Fiction and Narrative Nonfiction/ Memoir. In addition to their workshop manuscript, participants may have a second manuscript read by a staff member who meets with them in an individual conference.
This summer we are lucky to have a terrific teaching staff joining us in our valley, including poets, writers, teachers, agents and editors. We also anticipate this year to feature a cohort of extremely talented poets and writers – all of whom represent our community’s depth, diversity, talent and commitment to cultivating friendships that boost one another’s writing lives and careers.
This pandemic has caused every member of our broader community to endure tremendous difficulties. We want those of you who will join us here in the valley to consider it a refuge, and a safe place in general. Therefore certain measures will be taken to ensure the safety of all of our community members. Please refer to our health guidelines over the coming months for up-to-date information on our evolving safety strategy.
As we gear up for our first summer back in the valley since the pandemic began, we will continue to put out messaging to keep you abreast of the exciting year that is to come. In the meantime, we encourage you to engage with our virtual offerings. Now, we are building the infrastructure for year-round programming that is affordable and accessible to anyone through our Virtual Valley and through the Writers’ Annex, which is currently offering weekly courses offered by Community of Writers staff – all online and interactive. This month, Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet, Robert Hass is teaching a six-week intensive course on the life and work of Polish Poet Czesław Miłosz. Later this spring, Community of Writers Staff Poet Kazim Ali will teach a short course called “The Poetry & Poetics of Lucille Clifton.” Over the course of four weeks (Thursday evening sessions, live on Zoom), Ali will guide us through the work of long time Community of Writers staff poet, Lucille Clifton. The Writer’s Annex will continue to offer programming year-round as we seek to cultivate a broader and more inclusive community that is not limited to those who can attend the summer workshops. Likewise, we are exploring ways in which our in-person events can be made available online in some capacity moving forward, whether streamed or available as a Video On Demand after the fact.
Congratulations to these Community of Writers alum and teaching staff who have published books during the fourth quarter of 2021! We are delighted to share their success with you. You can explore these books by clicking the book cover images below. Support these writers and buy their books!
Visit our Omnium Gatherum to explore all the recent alumni news.
The fall issue of our online, in-house, invitation-only, COVID-era quarterly Community of Writers journal arrives, as you will note, with a lot of adjectival explanation. Fortunately, the writing once again lives up to the hype, with poetry and prose which runs the gamut. Running the gamut has been a marathon lately, as reflected in personal, political, meditative if reliably artful offerings from this issue’s contributors: poet David Mills, novelist Monica West and nonfiction writers Martina Clark and Kate Nason. Dear friend Kris O’Shee shares an excerpt from her memoir about life and love with longtime staffer Alan Cheuse (1940-2015), with archival photos by Brett Hall Jones and Tracy Hall. Fiction Co-Director Louis B. Jones starts us off with a seasonal report from the actual Valley. I hope you are delighted, inspired, and affirmed by exemplary work from your Community of Writers pals, whether you’ve met them in real life at the conference or not.
Andrew Tonkovich
Editor, OGQ
Congratulations to these Community of Writers Alums who have published books during the third quarter of 2021! We are delighted to share their success with you. You can explore these books by clicking the book cover images below. Support these writers and buy their books!
Visit our Omnium Gatherum to explore all the recent alumni news.
All times Pacific.
1:00 PM: Panel: Structure and Other Essential Narrative Strategies in Memoir and Nonfiction, with Alex Espinoza, Debra Gwartney, Sands Hall, Julia Flynn Siler, moderated by Frances Dinkelspiel
5:00 PM: Short Takes: Staff read work in progress and talk about issues of craft: Frances Dinkelspiel, Alex Espinoza, Julia Flynn Siler, Martin J. Smith
1:00 PM: Panel: Locating and Researching the Story You Need to Tell with Lauren Markham, Julia Flynn Siler, Martin J. Smith, Grace Talusan, moderated by Alex Espinoza
1:00 PM: Writing About Family and Other Difficult Topics, with Glen David Gold, Sands Hall, Gregory Pardlo, and Grace Talusan, moderated by Debra Gwartney
5:00 PM: Short Takes: Staff read work in progress and talk about issues of craft: Glen David Gold, Debra Gwartney, Gregory Pardlo
1:00 PM: Panel: Short Forms, Hybrid Forms with Frances Dinkelspiel, Alex Espinoza, Debra Gwartney, Martin J. Smith, moderated by Sands Hall
Congratulations to these Community of Writers Alums who have published books during the second quarter of 2021! We are delighted to share their success with you. You can explore these books by clicking the book cover images below. Support these writers and buy their books!
Visit our Omnium Gatherum to explore all the recent alumni news.
The Community of Writers continues its series of literary conversations as part of our online literary journal, The OGQ: The Omnium Gatherum Quarterly.
“The poems tell a California story and the story of the American West and American poetry,” Alvarez says. “Contributors include some of the country’s most acclaimed poets, along with those just starting out, each with something to say about where and how we live together.”
“The poets in the (Poetry) program are being celebrated in a new anthology published by Heyday Books: Why to These Rocks: 50 Years of Poetry from the Community of Writers. The title comes from a poem by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Galway Kinnell, who directed the Poetry Program for 17 years: “Then why to these rocks/ Do I keep coming back why.”
We’re delighted to announce two new poetry readings to celebrate the publication of our 50th anniversary poetry anthology, Why to These Rocks: 50 Years of Poetry from the Community of Writers.
• April 11: At the Sierra Poetry Festival online. More details
• April 16: At Skylight Books reading series online. More details.
The Community of Writers celebrates fifty years of its annual poetry workshop with an extraordinary collection by some of the country’s most prominent contemporary poets. “Why To These Rocks: 50 Years of Poetry from the Community of Writers” includes over 140 poems inspired by or written in High Sierra during the annual workshop week. Read more.
Sunday, April 11 | 11:30 AM (Pacific)
The Community of Writers will join the Sierra Poetry Festival online for a virtual poetry reading for Heyday’s release of Why to These Rocks: 50 Years of Poetry from the Community of Writers.
Introduced by: Lisa D. Alvarez, the anthology’s editor.
Both teaching staff poets and alumni poets of the storied annual summer Poetry Workshops of the Community of Writers will read from the first section of the anthology, “Poems about Place.” In addition to reading from their own work, each featured poet will also select another poem to read. Although the place where these poems were first written unifies these poems, they are as varied and distinctive in their lyricism, voice, and scope as the watershed of the Sierra itself.
Join Chris Davidson, Christina Hutchins, Patricia Spears Jones, Francisco Márquez, Sharon Olds, Maw Shein Win, and Matthew Zapruder for another celebration of the publication of this extraordinary anthology, as they read and discuss poems first written during the Community of Writers Poetry Workshop.
Wednesday, April 21 | 6:30 PM (Pacific)
Virtual event on Crowdcast. Registrants will be sent a Crowdcast link upon registration.
The Community of Writers will join SkyLight Books online for a virtual poetry reading for Heyday’s release of Why to These Rocks: 50 Years of Poetry from the Community of Writers. The evening will celebrate fifty years of poetry written during the Poetry Workshop in the High Sierra.
Emcee: Lisa D. Alvarez, the project’s editor.
Join Francisco Aragón, Joan Baranow, Katie Ford, Jay A. Fernandez, Lester Graves Lennon, Michelle Brittan Rosado, Vickie Vértiz, Sholeh Wolpé, and Charles Harper Webb for another celebration of the publication of this extraordinary anthology, as they read and discuss poems first written during the Community of Writers Poetry Workshop.
The Community of Writers turns 50 this year. A new book highlights how the Olympic Valley retreat steered California’s voice.
“In late 1969, California’s literary scene was in trouble.” Two couples founded the Community of Writers to save it. In this article from the San Francisco Chronicle’s Datebook, written by Scott Thomas Anderson, read about our 50-year history and our new poetry collection from Heyday Books celebrating this milestone called Why to These Rocks: 50 Years of Poetry from the Community of Writers. Read the article here.
The Community of Writers is delighted to announce two scholarships for PEN Emerging Voices Fellows who require financial aid to attend the Community of Writers Summer Workshops this summer.
Dates:
Poetry: June 19 – 26, 2021
Fiction Workshop: July 11 – 17, 2021
Narrative Nonfiction and Memoir Workshop: August 1 – 6, 2021
Deadline to apply: March 28, 2021
Each scholarship will be for the full tuition cost of each workshop ($900 for Poetry, $880 for Fiction, and $850 for Narrative Nonfiction and Memoir).
Interested Emerging Voices Fellows will need to apply to the workshop by March 28, and request this scholarship in the application form. Fellows offered scholarships will need to submit a $100 deposit (which will be refunded on the first day of the workshop.) This is a scholarship for poets and writers who have not previously attended the Poetry Workshop.
The Community of Writers is delighted to announce three scholarships for Cave Canem Fellows who require financial aid to attend the Community of Writers Poetry Workshop this summer.
Dates: June 19 – 26, 2021
Deadline to apply: March 28, 2021
Each scholarship will be for $900, which is the full tuition to the 2021 Poetry Program.
Interested Cave Canem Fellows will need to apply to the workshop by March 28, and request this scholarship in the application form. Fellows offered scholarships will need to submit a $100 deposit (which will be refunded on the first day of the workshop.) This is a scholarship for poets who have not previously attended the Poetry Workshop.
We are sorry to report that we have been forced to cancel our summer workshops in Olympic Valley due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This was to be our 50th Anniversary session, and so we’re particularly sad that we won’t be able to get together.
Our participants and teaching staff come in from all over the country, and a dozen foreign countries as well. They live together in houses and condos during their stay, eat dinner together, meet for lectures and panels, and in smaller workshops where they sit close together. It was a hard decision to make but we feel it would be impossible to run the workshops and still keep everybody safe.
POETRY:
The Community of Writers will offer the Poetry Workshop entirely online this year. June 20 – 27, 2020. It will be the very same intensive week of writing, craft talks and individual conferences.
More details can be found on the Poetry Workshop page.
