Writing Workshops - 2012
Poetry: Image/Narrative - Joseph Millar
July 2-6
Monday-Friday
10am-12pm
5 Sessions
Pamet Crossing
$360
This workshop will focus on the poetic duality of image and narrative, twin engines driving much contemporary poetry. The course will briefly consider their development from Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams through James Wright and the "Deep Imagists", keeping in mind their potential for our own work and for tapping our unconscious poetic energies. We will use as models for exercises poems by Adrienne Rich, Henri Cole, Louise Gluck, Arthur Rimbaud, James Tate, and D.H. Lawrence.
Joseph Millar is the author of Blue Rust (Carnegie-Mellon, 2012), Fortune (EWU Pres, 2007. His first collection, Overtime (2001) was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Millar spent 25 years in the San Francisco Bay area, working at a variety of jobs, from telephone repairman to commercial fisherman. His poems have appeared in magazines such as DoubleTake, Ploughshares, New Letters, Shenandoah and APR, and have won a fellowship from the NEA and a Pushcart Prize.
In 1997 he gave up his job as a telephone installation foreman to try his hand at teaching. Presently he works at Pacific University's Low Residency MFA Program, in the summer program at Sarah Lawrence College, and at Esalen Institute in Big Sur.
If you sign up for both Joe Millar & Dorianne Laux – get a $50 discount
What Makes a Poem Memorable - Dorianne Laux
July 2-6
Monday-Friday
1-4pm
5 Sessions
Pamet Crossing
$450
This workshop/study group will consist of reading the work of established poets, creating new drafts, and working with already produced poems. The group will take a close look at prize-winning poems by Mark Doty, B.H. Fairchild, Ruth Stone, Belle Waring and Beverly Cleary and seek to understand what makes them memorable. Students will practice imitation as a striving toward writing their own unforgettable poems with daily in-class free-writes and take home exercises. Three poems from each poet should be submitted in advance of the first class.
The 2012 President's Chair honors:
The Energy of the Poem - Peter Campion
July 9 – 13
Monday – Friday
9am – 12pm
5 Sessions
Pamet Crossing
$380
The goal of the class will be to find new sources for our poems. What inspires us to write? How can we cultivate these energies, while discovering new opportunities for our writing? How can we give more dynamic shapes to our poems? In discussion and workshop, and in the spirit of collegial encouragement, we’ll address big questions such as these, as we attend to specific formal features such as line, sentence, tone, and image. We’ll consider both student poems and classic poems. Poets at all levels are welcome. You may bring poems you’ve already written; we’ll also look at work written during the week of our class.
Peter Campion is the author of two books of poems, Other People (2005) and The Lions (2009.) His work appears regularly in such venues as The Boston Globe, The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The New York Times, Poetry, Slate, and Threepenny Review. He is the recipient of a Puschart Prize, the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. He teaches in the M.F.A. Program at the University of Minnesota.
The Elements of Fiction - Sarah Anne Johnson
July 9 – 13
Monday-Friday
2 – 4pm
5 Sessions
Pamet Crossing
$360
Your story or novel is made up of different elements that you can understand and examine in order to write more powerful prose. In this workshop, we’ll critique your manuscripts with an eye toward these critical elements of your 
fiction: words-sentences-paragraphs, dialogue, character, physical details, and point-of-view. While examining your prose, we’ll also look at the work of some accomplished writers to study how they create those perfectly polished sentences, idiosyncratic details that place us specifically in a scene, and characters that jump of the page. You’ll leave this workshop with ideas on how to improve your manuscript, and write powerful, compelling prose, as well as a list of authors to read.
Sarah Anne Johnson is the author of The Very Telling, The Art of the Author Interview, and Conversations with American Women Writers. Her interviews appear in The Writer's Chronicle, Glimmertrain Stories, Provincetown Arts, and The Writer where she is a contributing editor. Her fiction has appeared in Other Voices, and she is the recipient of residencies in fiction from Jentel Artists' Residency Program and Vermont Studio Center. She has taught the Art of the Author Interview Workshop at Bennington College Writing Seminars MFA Program, Lesley University MFA Program, and at literary conferences nationwide.
Centering Yourself Thru Writing Poetry - Howard Seeman
July 9 – 13
Monday-Friday
4:00 – 5:30 pm
5 Sessions
Pamet Crossing
$200
We will form a small creative family-group where we will get assistance in not just writing poetry for others to listen to, but for ourselves to listen to; to find out what is inside us, to get a hold on it, to learn more "where we are", to better be in the "now" now, and to better navigate our lives. Our feelings are often hidden, buried, blocked or blocking us - until we grab them with words to share them. We will not only get a better grip on our insides, but also, thereby, connect with others' insides too - often: what life is about.
Howard Seeman, Ph.D. is professor Emeritus at CUNY, a certified poetry therapist [but we will not be doing therapy], and has taught and lectured on emotional education for over 30 years.
Poetry: Learning Through Listening - Josephine Del Deo
July 16-20
Monday-Thursday
2-4pm
4 Sessions
Pamet Crossing
$340
This workshop will be a series of lectures in which Del Deo will elucidate three main elements of poetry: meaning, metaphor and music, which she will example by selections which have provided inspiration for her own work. This is not intended as a teaching workshop in the traditional sense, but as “learning through listening” and examination of experience in order to reveal and to access the rich offerings that poetry may endlessly offer. Questions and discussion will take place at the end of each day.
Josephine Breen Del Deo’s prolific career includes poetry, biography, fiction, art history, plays and essays. She has had a lifelong preoccupation with poetry. Actively engaged in the art community of Provincetown since 1953, she published the biography of the painter Ross Moffett Figures In A Landscape in 1995 and the Beginnings The History of the Fine Arts Work Center 1964 – 1969 in 1995. Her poetry includes 6 chapbooks and many poems have appeared in a number of periodicals. In 2005 and 2006 she gave several presentations at the Payomet Performing Arts Center in Truro
All About Story - Anne Bernays
July 23-27
2-4pm
Monday-Friday
5 Sessions
Pamet Crossing
The imagination is like a muscle; it can be stretched by exercise. With this is mind, members of the class will complete daily writing exercises designed to locate, shape, and expand on the stories all around us all the time. Students will read their work aloud in class. In addition, their critical skills will be sharpened by commenting on the work of their classmates in what should be lively discussions.
Anne Bernays’ tenth novel, “The Man on the Third Floor,” will be published in November. She is co-author of “What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers” and, with Justin Kaplan, “Back Then,” a memoir. She teaches at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation and at Lesley University’s MFA in Writing Program. She has published scores of essays, book reviews, and travel pieces.
The Page Waits: A Workshop for Writers in the Making - Judith Huge
July 30 - August 3
Monday-Friday
10am – 12 pm
5 Sessions
Pamet Crossing
$360
Margaret Atwood has written, “The page waits, pretending to be blank.” This workshop is for those who have always intended to write their own story but have yet to discover the way in or clear the time to follow where it leads. In truth, finding our stories can be an act of excavation; they hide. In the back of a closet, in the cracks on a coffee mug, in the creases of a catcher’s mitt, they wait to be re-discovered and brought back to life on the page. Working with material from your own life, we will explore a wide variety of ways to start and structure your stories, using the tools of narration and reflection to build better bridges between yourself, your reader, and the world outside your door. The page waits.
Judith Huge has spent more than 30 years as a college teacher, writer, corporate consultant, and workshop director. She is founder of a graduate program in the teaching of writing at Goucher College, president of her own national consulting firm, and has trained more than 5,000 people to use communication in managing their work and lives. She has conducted a wide variety of workshops for those in transition including The New PMS (Post-Move Syndrome), Finding the Me in Memoir, Re-Minding the Body, and Your Write to Heal, to name a few. Currently teaching courses in advanced writing and Therapeutic Journaling at Lakeland College, she has written a regular business column and contributes frequent travel narratives for the Gannett newspaper and magazine chain. In addition, she is the author of "A Middle Aged Woman and the Sea," a tale of memoir and transition published in Women in the Wild.
How To Write In Someone Else's Voice - David Unger
August 6-9
Monday-Thursday
9:30am-12:00pm
4 Sessions
Pamet Crossing
$360
As writers we need to create different kinds of characters—people to admire, creeps, contradictory individuals, and unreliable friends. This class will focus on how to project your voice to articulate the expressions of different characters and make each one unique, consistent, and fully formed. We will focus on describing characters, making them speak and interact with one another as we generate a plausible narrative.
Guatemalan-born David Unger published two novels in 2011: Para Mi, Eres Divina [In My Eyes, You Are Beautiful] and The Price of Escape. He is also the author of Ni chicha, ni limonada, Life in the Damn Tropics, Vivir en el maldito trópico. His short stories and essays have appeared in Make Magazine, Guernica Magazine, Letras Libres KGBBarLit, and Playboy Mexico. Unger has been a featured writer in book festivals in San Juan, Miami, Bógota, Lima, La Paz New York and Guadalajara.
Writing En Plein Air – Elizabeth Bradfield
August 6 – 9
Monday – Thursday
1 – 4 pm
4 Sessions
$360
Register
Rather than hunching over our desks, let's take our notebooks and write from the natural world as sketch artists do. Each day, we will head out into the dunes and woods and allow the place to speak through us. We’ll bring tools, of course: binoculars, natural history facts, stories about this place, and writing exercises that stretch our perceptive muscles. Although the examples and exercises will focus on poetry, this workshop will benefit any writer interested in honing his or her skills of representation and imagery. Toward the end of the week, we'll share some of what we've done, but the emphasis will be on creating new work. You don’t need to be an experienced writer to enjoy this week. Just come ready to open yourself to Cape Cod’s particular beauty. Bring a notebook suitable for writing outside, and be prepared to spend time outside in a range of weather (sun hats and rain jackets, drinking water, comfortable shoes). Although excursions will not be strenuous, be prepared to walk in soft sand and perhaps to duck under a branch or two. I look forward to seeing what we discover.
Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of two collections of poems: Interpretive Work and Approaching Ice. Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Orion, Poetry, and in many anthologies, including the recent Oil + Water, proceeds from which goes to benefit restoration in the Gulf of Mexico. Bradfield works as a naturalist locally and in Alaska, Baja California, the Eastern Canadian Arctic, the Amazon, and elsewhere. She is always searching to deepen the relationship between literature and place, between science and art.
10 Minute Play Workshop - Sinan Unel
August 13 – 17
Performance on Aug. 20th at the Payomet Performing Arts Center in Truro
Monday – Friday
10am – 12pm
5 Sessions
Pamet Crossing
$360
Elegant and economic, the ten-minute play is a refined miniature of a full-length dramatic work. It embodies all the structural elements of the full-length play: inciting incident, turning points, dramatic arc and resolution. An increasingly popular format in festivals across the country, the ten-minute play can move its audience to tears, laughter and delightful cathartic surprise. Award-winning playwright and filmmaker Eric Lane calls it “a jolt of theatrical energy.”
Writing the ten-minute play is a great exercise for any writer. Whether you’re an experienced playwright or someone who’s never written anything before, writing the ten-minute play will introduce you to the virtues of economy and help sharpen your dramatic skills. In a workshop environment, you’ll be asked to write and revise a short play of your own. Then you will see your work showcased at the end of the session in an evening of readings at Truro’s Payomet Performing Arts.
Sinan Ünel’s plays have been produced at: The Huntington Theatre Company, The Long Wharf Theater, The Arcola Theatre (London), Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, The Lark Theatre Company (New York), The Gate Theatre (London), Provincetown Theatre Company, Provincetown Theatreworks, Landes-theater (Germany), Theater Kosmos (Austria), Theatre at Boston Court (Pasadena, CA). Sinan has been awarded The John Gassner Memorial Award, The Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, and was a fellow with the Huntington Theatre Company from 2003 to 2005. His script Race Point was the winner of the 2001 New Century Writer Award for best screenplay. His plays include Pera Palas, The Cry of the Reed, Single Lives, and New Life. Sinan divides his time between New York and Cape Cod, and teaches at Lesley College in Boston. www.sinanunel.com
Biography and Memoir - Justin Kaplan
August 13 - 16
Monday – Thursday
2 - 4 pm
4 Sessions
Pamet Crossing
Autobiography, biography, and memoir are literary ways of shaping real-life experience into narrative. This is a hands-on, workshop course that requires the active participation of each student. Please enroll only if you have a specific writing project in mind or in progress and are willing to present it for class discussion.
Justin Kaplan is the author of Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain (winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award), Walt Whitman: A Life, Lincoln Steffens: A Biography, and Mark Twain and His World. He is General Editor of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In collaboration with his wife Anne Bernays, he wrote The Language of Names and Back Then: Two Lives in 1950's New York, a joint memoir published by Morrow/HarperCollins. The paperback edition of his latest non-fiction book, When the Astors Owned New York, was published by Plume in 2007.
Poetry Workshop - Brendan Galvin
August 20 – 24
Monday – Friday
9am – 12pm
5 Sessions
Pamet Crossing
$380
This workshop will cover getting started and keeping it going, and revising from early drafts using strategies for brainstorming and noodling. Along with student work, we will study examples of poems that succeed and poems that for various reasons do not. Participants should bring several recent poems they have written and care about for workshop discussion.
Brendan Galvin is the author of sixteen collections of poems. Habitat: New and Selected Poems 1965-2005 was a finalist for the National Book Award. Ocean Effects appeared in fall, 2007. His translation of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis appeared in the Penn Greek Drama Series in 1998. Whirl Is King appeared from LSU Press in 2008. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA fellowships, the Sotheby Prize of the Arvon Foundation (England), the Iowa Poetry Prize, and Poetry’s Levinson Prize, as well as the first OB Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize from the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Charity Randall Citation from the International Poetry Forum, the Sewanee Review’s Aiken Taylor Award in Modern American Poetry, and the Boatwright Prize from Shenandoah. He has been Wyndham Roberston Visiting Writer in Residence in the MA program at Hollins University, Coal Royalty Distinguished Writer in Residence in the MFA program at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, visiting writer at Connecticut College, and Whichard chairholder in the Humanities at the East Carolina University. He lives in Truro.
Non- Fiction Seminar Sebastian Junger
August 28
9 – 12
1 Session
Pamet Crossing
$125
In this 3 hour workshop, we will use his book, War, as a starting point for a three-hour seminar on narrative non-fiction, with particular focus on turning personal experience into a compelling story. Sebastian will discuss prose style, structure, research, honesty and accuracy. Of particular importance to any non-fiction writer is how truth is defined, and at what point a writer has slipped disastrously into fiction. The class will discuss that important topic at great length. Come prepared to discuss War and to complete a brief writing assignment in class.
Sebastian Junger is the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of The Perfect Storm, A Death in Belmont and Fire and War. As a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and as a contributor to ABC News, he has covered major international news stories in Liberia, Sierra Leone and other places around the globe. He has been awarded the National Magazine Award and an SAIS Novartis Prize for Journalism.
For over a year, Junger and photojournalist Tim Hetherington embedded with battle company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, in the remote and heavily contested Korengal valley of eastern Afghanistan. Reporting on the war from the soldiers’ perspective, Junger spent weeks at a time at a remote outpost that saw more combat than almost anywhere else in the entire country.
Workshops Summer 2012
This year over a hundred workshops are being offered in all disciplines.
About Us
A location, nestled in the dunes of Truro and within walking distance to Cape Cod bay, provides an inspirational and meditative backdrop that enhances the workshop experience.
A distinguished faculty that consists of prominent artists in the fields of painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, jewelry and writing.
A student body consists of both working artists and art students who hail from all over the US and Canada. Today Castle Hill celebrates its 40th year Anniversary.