Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: More Songs about Buildings, Food, Flora, Courses, Lectures, Panels, Endings

  This is the campus bookstore here at Dominican University. Just kidding. It is the building in which the bookstore is housed. It is an incredible building, don’t you think? Look at this beautiful thing. I don’t know what happens in this building, but I took a picture of it. And then I went upContinue reading “Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: More Songs about Buildings, Food, Flora, Courses, Lectures, Panels, Endings”

Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: Generative Muscles

I began this blog post on the first full day of Writer’s Camp surrounded by writers in a quick half an hour session of generative writing practice–the large group version of what fellow camper Lauren Yaffe calls a writing buddy system: two or three or more people sit down in a room or at aContinue reading “Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: Generative Muscles”

Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: The Resurrection of the Contest in Order to Exacerbate Feelings of Rejection, a Dongle Dilemma, When a Poem is Not a Poem, One Bad Dream, and More Blessedness.

  Things started out kind of rowdy here at Mt. Holyoke. The microphone was wonky. There’s nothing worse than a wonky microphone. Better no microphone than a wonky one. One of our attendees was trapped in his room by tables of books. But he’s got the only refrigerator in the entire building in his roomContinue reading “Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: The Resurrection of the Contest in Order to Exacerbate Feelings of Rejection, a Dongle Dilemma, When a Poem is Not a Poem, One Bad Dream, and More Blessedness.”

Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: The Sermon on the Mount Holyoke

Blessed are the writers who have arrived at Mount Holyoke College to participate in the 2017 Warren Wilson MFA Program Alumni Conference, for they are lucky bastards, and I feel truly blessed and lucky to be here among them. Blessed is the writer who takes the red-eye flight out of Portland at midnight, sleeps throughContinue reading “Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: The Sermon on the Mount Holyoke”

A Single Dispatch from Writer’s Camp on the 40th Anniversary of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College

First of all, I was sick with a cold when at 10:30 pm I boarded the plane for a red-eye from Portland to Atlanta, a nearly five hour flight through most of which I would be sneezing and blowing and stuffing kleenex into my own private trash bag that I kept discreetly stuffed into theContinue reading “A Single Dispatch from Writer’s Camp on the 40th Anniversary of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College”

#188: On A Birthday Weekend Alone

  “Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?”—Henry David Thoreau My brother asked me through a facebook comment, are you spending the weekend alone? And I wasn’t sure what the question meant, whether or not it contained a sub-text of surprise or dis-belief: really, on your birthday, you wantContinue reading “#188: On A Birthday Weekend Alone”

#187: On the Difficulty of Getting Here

Friday afternoon, trying to prepare for a cabin retreat, a birthday weekend of solitude and reflection and writing, I stepped in a pile of leaf camouflaged dog shit in the driveway. I didn’t realize I had done this until I proceeded to go into the house with shit all over my shoe. I removed theContinue reading “#187: On the Difficulty of Getting Here”

#186: On Writing Retreat

On Writing Retreat, December 5, 2015, L. L. Stub Stewart State Park, Buxton, Oregon It’s raining so hard here, it would be unthinkable to go outside for a walk. So I am stuck in this cabin without internet access and there’s only a few things to do: listen to music, meditate, read, eat, or, theContinue reading “#186: On Writing Retreat”