Writers join Cullowhee Mountain ARTS summer series
Now celebrating its third season, Cullowhee Mountain ARTS will be hosting creative writing workshops, taught by nationally recognized writers, as part of the 2014 Summer ARTS Series of artists’ workshops, presentations and youth art camps.
The Summer ARTS Series is held at Western Carolina University in the Bardo Fine and Performing Arts Center from June 15 to July 26. The artist and writer workshops/retreats will be May 18-23 and Sept. 15-21 at the Lake Logan Retreat Center in Canton.
The addition of the creative writing workshops is the next step for Cullowhee Mountain ARTS reaching its long-range goal — to become a summer destination for adult learners in all mediums of art. The nonprofit organization, directed by Norma Hendrix, has become nationally recognized in just two and a half years.
“We began with visual arts workshops and programming, which is my field, but are ready now to start adding programming in other disciplines in the arts,” Hendrix said. “Creative writing is our addition this season and by 2022 the CMA board of directors and I would like to see music, film, dance and theater all be represented during the annual Summer ARTS Series.”
The writer workshops and retreats are as follows:
• The Kathryn Stripling Byer “Singing it Forward” poetry workshop will be held May 18-23 at the Lake Logan Retreat Center.
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Byer has published six collections of poetry, her first being The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest, which was an Associated Writing Programs Award selection. Her second collection, Wildwood Flower, received the Laughlin Award from the Academy of American poets.
Subsequent books have received the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance award for best book of the year in poetry, the Hanes Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and the North Carolina Book Award for Poetry. Descent, her most recent collection, has recently been awarded the Roanoke-Chowan prize. Byer is also the first female Poet Laureate of North Carolina.
The session is for all levels of writers. Cost for the workshop/retreat is $1,349 and is all-inclusive — a single room shared in a charming cabin, first night reception, all meals and enrichment sessions.
• The Lola Haskins “Poetry, Plein Air and Otherwise” creative writing workshop will be held June 15-20 at Western Carolina University.
Haskins teaches in Pacific Lutheran University’s low residency Master’s of Fine Arts program. Her tenth book of poems, The Grace to Leave and her ninth, Still, the Mountain won Florida Book Awards. Her in-print collections include Desire Lines, New and Selected Poems, Extranjera, The Rim Benders and Forty-Four Ambitions for the Piano.
Haskins’ prose writings are Fifteen Florida Cemeteries, Strange Tales Unearthed, an advice book for people interested in poetry, Not Feathers Yet, A Beginner’s Guide to the Poetic Life, and Solutions Beginning with A, fables about women illustrated by Maggie Taylor.
The session is for all levels of writers. Tuition is $525.
• The Mark Powell “Getting it Down, Getting it Right” creative fiction writing workshop will be held June 22-27 at Western Carolina University.
Powell is the author of four novels, including The Sheltering, forthcoming in 2014, and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread loaf Writers’ Conference, as well as the Vaclav Havel Fellowship in Playwriting to the Prague Seminar. Powell is an assistant professor of English at Stetson University in Florida. Ron Rash endorses him as “The best Appalachian novelist of his generation.”
The session is for all levels of writers. Tuition is $525.
• The Colleen Lineberry “Power of Play; Creative Ways with Words” poetry/fiction/nonfiction/journaling workshop will be held June 29-July 4 at Western Carolina University.
Lineberry is a visual artist, educator, and poet. She has been teaching poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey for more than 25 years and has developed and presented workshops in writing and creative expansion. She has been the recipient of fellowships at Princeton University, Rutgers University and Vermont Studio Center, and has attended the Prague Summer Seminar for Poetry.
The session is for all levels of writers. Tuition is $525.
• The Baron Wormser “Writing Across the Genres” fiction/nonfiction/poetry workshop will be held July 6-11 at Western Carolina University.
Wormser is the author and co-author of 13 full-length books and a poetry chapbook. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bread Loaf and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. From 2000 to 2006 he served as poet laureate of the state of Maine. He teaches in the Fairfield University MFA Program and is director of educational outreach for the Frost Place in Franconia, N.H.
The session is for all levels of writers. Tuition is $595.
• The Elaine Neil Orr “Finding Your Life Through Writing It” creative nonfiction/memoir workshop will be held July 13-18 at Western Carolina University.
Orr is a trans-Atlantic writer of fiction, memoir and poetry. Themes of home, country and spiritual longing run through her writing. Her memoir, Gods of Noonday, was a Top-20 Book Sense selection and a nominee for the Old North State Award as well as a SIBA Book Award. She is associate editor of a collection of essays on international childhoods, Writing Out of Limbo, and the author of two scholarly books. Orr is an award-winning professor of English at North Carolina State University and serves on the faculty of the brief-residency MFA in writing program at Spalding University.
The session is for intermediate, advanced and master writers. Tuition is $595.
• The Cecilia Woloch “Deep Waters, Sturdy Craft: Embarking on the Poetic Sequence” master poetry workshop will be held Sept. 15-21 at the Lake Logan Retreat Center.
Woloch is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Carpathia, which was a finalist for the Milton Kessler Award in 2010. She has received writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, CEC/ArtsLink International, the California Arts Council and many others. The founding director of Summer Poetry in Idyllwild and of the University of Southern California’s The Poet in Paris program, she conducts workshops for writers throughout the United States and around the world.
Cost for the workshop/retreat is $1,549 and is all-inclusive — a single room in a shared charming cabin, first night reception, all meals and enrichment sessions.
