CLEVELAND ó You can join other writers for writing sessions this fall at the Weathers Creek Writersí Series.
Weathers Creek workshops offer a one-day get away to a lovely farm located between Cleveland and Mooresville. Class size is kept small for lots of individual interaction. Organizers say at Weathers Creek, writers have a chance to recharge their creative batteries in a wonderful, home-like setting.
On Sept. 10, Davidson College professor, poet and novelist Alan Michael Parker will be at the farm for ěLove & Revenge & Politics: Writing to Feel Better.î
ěWriters,î says Parker, ěwrite for different reasons. Our goal in this workshop will be to explore these various aims, and to address our approaches to being ëon the page.í î He also requests that participants bring two works in progress, each.
Parker is the author of two novels, including ěWhale Manî (WordFarm, 2011) and ěCry Uncle,î along with seven collections of poems, ěDays Like Prose,î ěThe Vandals,î ěLove Song with Motor Vehicles,î ěA Peal of Sonnets, Elephants & Butterflies,î ěTen Daysî (with painter Herb Jackson), and ěLong Divisionî (coming from Tupelo Press in 2012).
He served as editor of ěThe Imaginary Poets,î and co-editor of two other volumes of scholarship. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Paris Review, Pleiades and The Yale Review, among others, and are forthcoming widely, including in ěThe Best American Poetry, 2010î; his prose has appeared in journals including The Believer, The New York Times Book Review and The New Yorker.
He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a Pushcart Prize, the Fineline Prize from the Mid-American Review, and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. As an undergraduate, he was invited to join the graduate poetry workshop at Washington University, and as a graduate student in the School of the Arts at Columbia University, where he received his MFA in writing, Parker studied with Carolyn Forche, Richard Howard, Denis Johnson, Stanley Kunitz, William Matthews and Nobel Laureates Joseph Brodsky and Czeslaw Milosz.
Since 1998, Parker has taught at Davidson College, where he is professor of English and director of creative writing; he is also a Core Faculty Member in the Queens University low-residency MFA program. He lives in Davidson with his partner, the artist Felicia van Bork, and their son, Eli.
Sessions are $75 each. All sessions include a homemade lunch. Deadline for registration is Sept. 2 for the Sept. 10 session. Classes are limited to 14 people. Discounts are offered if you sign up for more than one session.
Gift certificates are available. All sessions will start promptly at 10 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. For a registration form, directions and other information, go to thr website, www.weatherscreek.net/.