APPLY NOW

It’s a bit like boot camp (without the yelling and obstacle courses) for serious writers.

Intensely creative, pushing you beyond what you thought you were capable of achieving—you eat, sleep, drink, breathe writing. And all around you are your fellow writers and instructors, cheering you on, encouraging you, word by word.

Workshops are held for three hours each morning, focusing on writing exercises, reading and critiquing work, and talking about writing technique. The afternoons allow private time for reading and writing. Evenings are spent with public readings from instructors, visiting writers, and workshop participants.

Whether you’ve been writing for years, recently graduated from an MFA program, or have just now decided to take the leap out of your private notebooks and into a classroom, you’ll find a workshop here to help you accomplish your literary goals.

The Program

Workshops in 2008 offer something for everyone!

The standard workshops in Poetry and Fiction will focus on the generation and revision of new work. Instructors will employ challenging exercises and lead the groups in close readings and discussions of participants’ work. In addition, the instructors will schedule personal meetings to discuss workshop assignments and other projects.

The Literary Nonfiction Workshop will also focus on the generation and revision of new work. Literary Nonfiction—whether memoir, reportage, nature or travel writing—organizes the elements of the world into coherent prose. The writer’s challenge is often finding the right form in which to tell the story.

The Poetry Workshop for New Writers is designed for beginning poets, people whose work has been in another genre, like novels or the personal essay, as well as people who wish to start from scratch. Our focus will be on the production and early revision of new work—a poem a day! We will explore the fine art of reading poetry as well as writing it. We will think together about poetry’s forms, its shapes and methods; and we will experiment with a wide variety of subject matter and materials.

The Fiction Workshop for New Writers is run much the same as the other workshops. You will write a piece of fiction every day, based on prompts to spark your imagination. Along the way we will be asking the question, What is a story? The week should provide us with some answers, or at least clues. The supportive and energetic atmosphere will send you home with a lot of surprising new work.

Workshop Leaders

Poetry

David Baker is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Midwest Eclogue and Treatise on Touch: Selected Poems, as well as of two critical books. He currently serves as Professor of English at Denison University where he holds the Thomas B. Fordham Chair of Creative Writing. He is a recent recipient of a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation and is the poetry editor of The Kenyon Review. Read two poems by Baker.

A recent Guggenheim Fellow, LINDA GREGERSON is the Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, where she teaches creative writing and Renaissance literature. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry as well as in the Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, TriQuarterly, and other publications. Among her many awards and honors are an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, three Pushcart Prizes, and a Kingsley Tufts Award. Read an interview with Linda Gregerson.

Fiction

NANCY ZAFRIS is the author of two novels, The Metal Shredders (a New York Times Notable book of the year) and more recently, Lucky Strike. Her collection of short stories, The People I Know, won the Flannery O'Connor award for short fiction as well as the Ohioana Library Association award. She is a two-time recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant.

Brad Kessler is the author of Birds in Fall, Lick Creek, and The Woodcutter’s Christmas, as well as several award-winning children’s books. He is the recipient of the 2007 Dayton Literary Peace Prize in fiction. Kessler is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His work has appeared in numerous major periodicals such as The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. Read KR's interview with Kessler, as well as an excerpt from Birds in Fall.

Christopher Tilghman is the author of two short story collections, In a Father’s Place, and The Way People Run and two novels, Mason’s Retreat and Roads of the Heart. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, the Virginia Quarterly Review and in many other literary quarterlies, and has been selected three times for Best American Short Stories. His honors and fellowships include the Whiting Writer's Award, the Ingram Merrill Foundation award, and a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. He is a Professor of English at the University of Virginia. Read a review of Tilghman's The Way People Run.

Literary Nonfiction

Rebecca McClanahan is the author of nine books, most recently Deep Light: New and Selected Poems 1987-2007 and The Riddle Song and Other Rememberings, which won the 2005 Glasgow Prize in Nonfiction, and Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively. Her poems, essays, and stories have appeared in Ms. Magazine, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, and numerous literary magazines and anthologies throughout the country. She has received a Pushcart Prize, the Wood Prize from Poetry, and has twice won the Carter Prize.

Poetry for New Writers

Meghan O'Rourke, literary editor for Slate and co-poetry editor at the Paris Review, recently published her first book of poetry, Halflife. A rave review in The New York Times noted that, “O’Rourke… narrows her eyes and strains to distinguish intelligence from chatter, to discern a path to the authentic.” Her poetry has been published the New Yorker, the New Republic, the Yale Review, the New York Review of Books, and her prose in Poetry, the New York Times Book Review, Slate, the LA Times Book Review, and elsewhere. Read KR's interview with O'Rourke, as well as some of her poetry.

Fiction for New Writers

GEETA KOTHARI is the fiction editor of The Kenyon Review. Born and raised in New York City, she now lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is a two-time recipient of the fellowship in literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and the editor of ‘Did My Mama Like to Dance?’ and Other Stories about Mothers and Daughters. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in various journals and anthologies, including The Kenyon Review, the Massachusetts Review, Fourth Genre, and Best American Essays. She teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. Listen to a reading of her short story "If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?"

Accommodations

Two Kenyon College residences—the Taft Cottages, and the ground floor of McBride Residence, a dormitory—will serve as our accommodations. Both facilities are air conditioned and have windows that open. The Taft Cottages are three stories high with each floor housing one apartment. Each apartment has three private bedrooms with locking doors, a shared bath, and shared living space with mini kitchen. McBride Residence has private rooms with locking doors and several shared bathrooms along the hallway. If you prefer a dormitory room instead of an apartment room, or if you need to be on a ground floor due to health issues, please let us know. We will make every effort to meet your needs. Several laundry facilities are available on campus.

If you prefer a hotel or bed and breakfast, please let us know. You will be responsible for booking your own housing and will receive a discount of $150 on your workshop fee. Here are some local housing options on campus:

• The Kenyon Inn, 100 W. Wiggin Street, Gambier, (740) 427-2202
• The Gambier House, 107 E. Wiggin Street, Gambier, (740) 427-2668,

Mount Vernon, a ten-minute drive from campus, also has hotel and B & B options.

The Community
Since John Crowe Ransom first edited The Kenyon Review in 1939, Kenyon College has been a national center for the literary arts, attracting celebrated writers and encouraging the work of younger poets, essayists, fictions writers, and playwrights. Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell, Peter Taylor, E.L. Doctorow, and William Gass, among others, all studied or taught at Kenyon.


The campus of Kenyon College, with its striking Gothic architecture, shady lawns, and gravel pathways, reflects its status as the oldest private college in Ohio. Writers Workshop participants enjoy the historic charm of the Village of Gambier while living in campus housing with ample space to work and access to the latest computer technology. Kenyon recreational facilities will also be open to participants. Within the village, you’ll find a bookstore, small grocery store, hair salon, women’s clothing retailer, post office, and several restaurants. Please note that living on the Kenyon campus entails a good deal of walking. If walking or using the stairs poses problems, please call the program office.

Kenyon College is located in Knox County, a rural county of rolling farmland, deciduous forests, and small cities in central Ohio. Some details:

Mount Vernon
Just four miles from campus, Mount Vernon offers plentiful shopping—antiques, crafts, local art, and more, a range of local attractions (including a children’s garden and historical museum), a variety of lodging and dining options, and an excellent public library.

Dining
Breakfast and dinner are provided, while lunch is on your own—offering an opportunity to continue writing discussions in small groups. There are several options for lunch in Gambier: each writer receives a gift coupon from Middle Ground Coffee Shop, which has a selection of healthful soups and wrap sandwiches, in addition to fine coffees and teas; the Kenyon Inn and the Village Inn serve a gourmet sit-down luncheon, while the Gambier deli and the local market provide a wide variety of choices. Mount Vernon and the surrounding area offer more options.

Outdoor Recreation
Kenyon is nestled in the rolling hills of the Kokosing River Valley, which offers opportunities for hiking, canoeing, and exploring nature. The College supports the Brown Family Environmental Center, and students frequent the Kokosing Gap Trail, a beautiful, paved 14-mile trail built on a former Pennsylvania Railroad bed, which is considered one of the largest volunteer-maintained bicycling trails in the nation.

APPLY NOW