Month: June 2012

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Words in the Woods ~ Returning to Northern Michigan

Gail Wallace Bozzano at Sleeping Bear Dunes, image from ICCA

So here we are again in Northern Michigan; have I told you before how much I love it up here? Beautiful, beautiful place: trees, sky, lakes, hills. And such interesting and talented people. Is it any wonder that Michigan fosters so many great writers? And not just the big names—Jim Harrison, Thomas Lynch, Ernest Hemingway—but those you may only be starting to know: Bonnie Jo Campbell, Michael Delp, Jack Driscoll, Anne-Marie Oomen, Fleda Brown, Jack Ridl, Aaron Stander, Alison Swan and and and…the list is far too long for this post.

Our visit here will begin with a recording for an interview for IPR’s Michigan Writers on the Air with Aaron Stander this afternoon, which will be followed with a 3-way reading at Brilliant Books in Traverse City. Join me, Anne-Marie Oomen, and Alison Swan at 7 PM (Friday, June 15.)

Tomorrow, Saturday, I will be signing books at Mclean & Eakin Booksellers in Petoskey from 1 – 3 PM. The Biennial Hemingway Society Conference will start up in this lovely little town on Sunday, for you EH fans.

On Sunday, Michigan Writers will host their awards reading for the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press Chapbook Contest. I had the wonderful opportunity to judge this year’s fiction selection, and I am honored to be able to participate in this event by introducing the winner of the fiction category.

On Monday, the Interlochen College of Creative Arts Writers’ Retreat gets underway. This is a really fine retreat, focusing on generating work—as opposed to others where the focus is on tearing work apart. Some very fine teaching writers will be running the workshops: Anne-Marie Oomen in creative nonfiction, Jaimy Gordon (National Book Award Winner) in fiction, A. Van Jordan in poetry, Philip Hartigan and I in Journal and Sketchbook. (There are still some spots available for the retreat by the way.) All of this will be directed by the fine and nomadic writer, Katey Schultz.

Following the Interlochen Writers’ Retreat, Philip will be teaching a printmaking workshop in Interlochen, and during this time I will retreat into my own writing.

Am I lucky, or what?

→Once again, thanks for reading! -PMc←