The Tomales Bay Workshops

University of California, Davis Creative Writing Program
October 27-31, 2010

Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation Keynote Speaker:
Award-winning author and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams

Tuition: $1,550 (includes the $150 application fee).
Space is limited, so please apply as early as possible. The deadline is July 15, 2010, or until full.

Four days of working with an established author, receiving constructive feedback and generating new material.

What Past Participants Are Saying

Download 2009 brochure (650 KB)

Download 2009 application (68 KB)

Download 2009 schedule (1 MB) 

The Tomales Bay Workshops bring aspiring writers into close community with nationally known poets, writers, respected editors and agents. Workshops limited to 12 participants ensure an intimate setting. In addition, participants have the opportunity to purchase one-on-one tutorials with a publishing professional.

The workshops are held at the Marconi Conference Center in Marshall, California, on the eastern shore of pristine Tomales Bay, just north of San Francisco in Marin County. The Marconi Center sits on a wooded hillside that overlooks serene water and mountains beyond. The center offers comfortable rooms, excellent food and inviting hiking trails. Come to relax, learn and explore.

The Workshops

There will be six workshops, which meet each morning for four consecutive days. Workshop are:

• Fiction/Nonfiction:  Listening and Dreaming and Writing Along the Way--Audacity and How We Get Words on the Page with Dorothy Allison. Good writing, while shaped by craft and revision, has its origins in a stubbornly intuitive and unpredictable process. We hope always to find ourselves in that almost magical rush of inspiration and energy, but have to find pragmatic ways to get there. What triggers exciting new work? Are there ways we can steer our imaginations toward the magic? You are encouraged to bring short sections of current manuscripts to the workshop, as well as a series of unanswered questions about the work, to share with the instructor and other participants. The emphasis will be on addressing those questions and creating new work through a sequence of exercises. All participants are encouraged to attend as many of the readings, gatherings and lectures as possible – always with a notebook and a mind ready to experience the provocative phrase or idea.
  
• All Genres: Word After Word--Unlocking Your Inner Writer with Jodi Angel. Margaret Atwood writes "A word after a word/after a word is power." Often times we know we have stories to tell, poems to write, life experiences to record. The problem is how? How do we make those first steps in putting those words on to the page? How do we write that first sentence, or find the concrete imagery to construct that first poetic line? This workshop will focus on freeing your inner writer to finally speak his or her truth. We will discuss aspects of each genre—how to construct characters, point of view, setting, imagery, metaphor and the importance of trusting your own voice. Participants will work in their chosen genre, writing to guided prompts that will help ignite the creative energy, as well as shaping work in progress that might be as vague as an idea or as tangible as a full draft. Feedback, encouragement and support will be provided every step of the way, so those first words provide you with the power to unlock your inner writer and set him or her free.
• Fiction: Outer Story/Inner Story with Ron Carlson. Writers will bring copies of a fresh story for the workshop table. In addition to discussing these stories, we will write two or three exercises focusing on the various elements of craft—inventory, dialogue, character and exposition—at least one of which will have relevance to the writer’s current story. The emphasis in our sessions will be on creating three dimensional fiction, amplifying all the promises in the story drafts. Carlson’s plan is to make a bigger mess than we can mop up and send everyone off with a plan for the next step.
• Nonfiction: The Lyric Essay with John D'Agata. We will explore a form of the essay that straddles both nonfiction and poetry. The lyric essay, as critics like to say, is more suggestive than it is exhaustive, relying more on image, rhythm and form than any of the conventions of traditional essaying. We will spend some time reading short samples of the lyric essay that have appeared throughout history, and then we will turn our attention to our own writing, workshopping some short exercises and at least one longer lyric essay from each student. Please come to class with at least one finished piece of between five and seven, double-spaced pages.
• Poetry, Memoir and Cross-Genre: Hybrid Forms--Going by the Way You Don't Know with Mark Doty.  My favorite Chinese proverb: “When you don’t know where you’re going, go by a way you don’t know.” This workshop focuses on the unexpected, unpredictable things that happen when traditional formal boundaries are broken and genres are allowed to complicate one another. What happens when essays break into the territory of lyric poetry, or poems open themselves to discursive content? We’ll look at work from Nick Flynn, Anne Carson, Claudia Rankine, Basho and other hybridists. Bring ideas you’ve carried, images that haunt you, and be prepared for writing exercises, experiments and adventures in the associative and disjunctive.
• Poetry: New Shadows--Moving Poems from Imitation to Innovation with Terrance Hayes. This workshop is intended to help poets help themselves. It will offer concrete strategies for sustained writing when the only teacher available is a book. We will explore the ways inventive imitation can lead to poetic discovery and innovation. (Think of imitation as transformation not reproduction.) Daily writing assignments will involve discussing and then imitating published poems from a multitude of styles and traditions. Come prepared to generate and share work written in class. In workshops poems will be discussed not for their merit as imitations, but for their originality and potential. No advanced submission is necessary.

Please indicate your workshop preference on your application form.

Publishing Consultants

Participants will have the opportunity to confer privately with publishing industry professionals. Acceptance for these sessions will be determined on a first-come, first-served basis. There is a $100 fee for each half-hour session.

The Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation Keynote Speaker

Terry Tempest Williams is a conservationist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, who is known for her impassioned and lyrical prose. Among her many books are the environmental classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field; and The Open Space of Democracy. Her many awards include the Robert Marshall Award from The Wilderness Society, the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western American Literature Association and the Wallace Stegner Award. She is currently the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah.

The Tomales Bay Workshops Faculty

Dorothy Allison is the author of Bastard Out of Carolina, Cavedweller (a New York Times Notable Book), Two or Three Things I Know for Sure and the forthcoming She Who. She was awarded the 2007 Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction. Allison lives in Northern California among redwood trees and unpredictable rivers—though she is often to be found on various campuses trying to encourage more people to write down their dreams.

Jodi Angel's first collection of short stories, The History of Vegas, was published in 2005 by Chronicle Books and named as a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2005 as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Review discovery. She received Special Mention for the 2007 Pushcart Prize and has been nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, The Sycamore Review, and Carve Magazine. She currently teaches literature and fiction writing at UC Davis and Sacramento City College.

Ron Carlson has authored 10 books of fiction, most recently the novel The Signal. The Los Angeles Times selected his novel Five Skies as one of the best books of 2007. His selected stories, A Kind of Flying, and his short fiction have appeared in Esquire, Harpers, The New Yorker, Gentlemen's Quarterly, Epoch, The Oxford American and has been included in The Best American Short Stories, The O'Henry Prize Series, The Pushcart Prize Anthology and The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Carlson is Director of the Graduate Program in Fiction at the University of California, Irvine, and the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

John D'Agata is the author of About a Mountain and Halls of Fame, as well as the editor of the anthologies The Lost Origins of the Essay and The Next American Essay. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa.

Mark Doty’s eight books of poems include Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, which won the National Book Award for Poetry. He has also published five books of nonfiction prose, most recently The Art of Description, a handbook for writers. His work has been honored with the National Book Critic Circle Award and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for nonfiction. He teaches at Rutgers University and lives in New York City.

Terrance Hayes’s most recent collection of poetry is Lighthead. His other books are Wind in a Box, Muscular Music and Hip Logic. His honors include four Best American Poetry selections, a Whiting Writers Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a professor of creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Program Director

Pam Houston is the author of two collections of linked short stories, Cowboys are My Weakness, which was the winner of the 1993 Western States Book Award and has been translated into nine languages, and Waltzing the Cat, which won the Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction. Her stories have been selected for volumes of Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and her story The Best Girlfriend You Never Had appeared in Best American Short Stories of the Century. Her first novel, Sight Hound, was published in January 2005. She is the Director of Creative Writing at the University of California, Davis, and teaches at many writers conferences and festivals in the U.S. and abroad. When not in Davis, she lives in Colorado at 9,000 feet above sea level near the headwaters of the Rio Grande. For more information on Houston visit www.pamhouston.net.

The Format

Morning workshops offer participants the opportunity to work closely with an established writer, to receive constructive feedback from peers, to spend four intensive days dedicated to creative work and to generate new material.

Afternoons will be devoted to participant readings and panels comprised of conference presenters and visiting editors and agents; panels will cover craft topics and publishing.

Evenings will be devoted to readings by conference presenters and special guest readers.

The Setting

The workshops will be held at the Marconi Conference Center in Marshall, California, on the eastern shore of Tomales Bay. The conference center, located on a California State Historic Park, sits on a wooded hillside that overlooks serene water and the mountains beyond. Inviting hiking trails offer a chance to see white fallow deer among the foliage or venture down to the coastline where locals harvest oysters.

Accommodations

The Marconi Conference Center provides comfortable lodging nestled in the pine trees. Double or triple rooms are available. Each smoke-free room has a private bath, study desk and wireless Internet access. Rooms are filled on a first-come, first-served basis. There are a limited number of single rooms available for a supplemental fee of $800. Disability-accessible and equipped rooms are available. Please let us know ahead of time if you require these accommodations. For additional information, visit http://www.marconiconference.org/index.htm.

Participants should bring comfortable walking shoes, as many Marconi Center walkways are not paved and run over small hills. Also, please bring warm clothes, in case the fog rolls in.

Frequently asked questions

Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation Fellowships

Three Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation Fellowships will be awarded to workshop participants (one each for poetry, fiction and nonfiction/personal essay). Fellowships cover the cost of the application fee, tuition, room and board but do not cover transportation. To apply for a fellowship, you must fill out the application form and include a brief cover letter and paper-clip both to your writing sample (please DO NOT INCLUDE YOUR NAME on your writing sample, which needs to consist of 10 pages of fiction or nonfiction/personal essay, or five poems. Indicate which fellowship you are applying for at the top left of the cover letter and on the application form. Postmark deadline for fellowship consideration is May 1, and awards will be announced by July 1. Please apply in one genre only. 

Discounts

The Tomales Bay Workshops is pleased to offer the following ways to receive $150 off your enrollment. Please note: Discounts must be requested on the application form and cannot be combined or applied retroactively. See application form.

• Early bird discount: Application must be postmarked by May 1. 
• UC Davis alumni and staff. 
  
• Returning participants. 
• Writing groups. Attend the Tomales Bay Workshops with your writing group of three or more members and each person will receive $150 off. Names of all group members must be listed on *each* person's individual application. Every effort will be made to allow group members to lodge together, though other conference participants may also be assigned as roommates. Please note that applying as a group does not guarantee admission. 
  

Professional Consultations

Participants will have the opportunity to confer privately with publishing industry professionals. Acceptance for these sessions will be determined on a first-come, first-served basis and space is limited. There is a $100 fee for each half-hour consultation.  Accepted participants may sign up for one or more publishing consultation(s) when they submit the required fees and enrollment documents; these documents will contain detailed sign-up and submission instructions.

The consultants for 2009 were Jonathan Bohr Heinen, senior editor of Iron Horse Literary Review; Jay Schaefer, editor at large for Workman Publishing; and Elizabeth Wales of Wales Literary Agency in Seattle. Consultants' bios. Consultants for 2010 will be announced in August 2010.

Requirements

Acceptance to the program is based upon review of a writing sample (10 pages of fiction or nonfiction/personal essay, or five poems). Applications are reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis, and you will be notified of acceptance. Please note: Those who have attended the Tomales Bay Writers' Workshops during a prior year do not need to submit a writing sample.

Fees

Enrollment in the Tomales Bay Workshops is $1,550 ($1,400 tuition + $150 application fee) and covers one four-day workshop, admittance to all panels and readings, opening and closing banquets, all meals (dinner on Wednesday; three meals Thursday through Sunday; breakfast on Monday) and lodging for five nights. Vegetarian meals are available upon request.

The application fee of $150 must be submitted with your application and writing sample. If you are not accepted, your application fee will be returned. If you are accepted, you will be notified of your workshop placement and asked to confirm your intention to attend by submitting a minimum deposit of $700. The remaining balance of $700 is due July 15.

Supplemental fees are due July 15. These include:

• The single room supplement ($800)
• A private session with publishing professional ($100)
• The optional UC Davis fee for 3.5 units of academic credit ($180)

Please note: There are a limited number of consultation sessions and single rooms available, and they will be reserved on a first-come, first-served basis. Please submit any optional fees as early as possible after acceptance into the program to guarantee your request. Full participation in the Tomales Bay Workshops and events is expected. No discounts are available for lodging or meals on your own.

If space is still available after August 1, applications must include the full payment of $1,550, which includes the $150 application fee. All fees will be fully refunded if applicant is not accepted.

Cancellation Policy

If you cancel by August 16, 2010, your tuition will be refunded minus a $30 processing fee and the $150 application fee. Once you have enrolled, the $150 application fee is not refundable. Refunds for cancellations made after August 16 are contingent upon filling your place and will be made only if your place is filled. In the unlikely event that we must cancel a workshop and you do not wish to transfer to another workshop, you will receive a full refund.

For more information, email us at tomales.bay.workshops@gmail.com

Getting to the Marconi Center

For driving directions and a map, visit http://www.marconiconference.org/maps.htm.

This course is not currently scheduled.
Please notify me the next time this course is offered.