We have been busy this fall lining up our 2023 conference and hosting online seminars! In case you missed it, we’ve enjoyed seminars from Donna Freitas and Kate Folk and have Claudia Castro Luna and Anastacia-Renée coming up on November 5 and 12. If you haven’t yet, grab your spot!
Each seminar is two hours and includes a presentation, resources, and Q&A. They are also recorded, so if you purchase a ticket and aren’t able to attend as it happens, you will be emailed a link to view the recording within 24 hours.
These seminars constitute an important fundraiser for us to support our in-person summer conference, so please spread the word! Every registration helps us continue creating meaningful, prestigious, and high-quality literary programming for our community. We appreciate your support!
Silence and the Imagination with Claudia Castro Luna
Sir Isaac Newton rested under an apple when a falling fruit inspired him to formulate his theory of gravity. As writers, how do we sustain inspiration? Each of us may have a different response to this question but I'd argue that to seek silence is a good place to start. Silence is the blank page of the world. The song of trees, the music of things plays out in it. Silence nurtures the imagination, births theories, inventions, and metaphors. This is an exploration of how things come into our minds that later appear in our writing.
Claudia Castro Luna is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate fellow (2019), WA State Poet Laureate (2018 – 2021) and Seattle’s inaugural Civic Poet (2015-2018). Castro Luna’s newest collection of poetry, Cipota Under the Moon, is forthcoming April 2022 from Tia Chucha Press. She is also the author of One River, A Thousand Voices (Chin Music Press), the Pushcart nominated Killing Marías(Two Sylvias Press) also shortlisted for WA State 2018 Book Award in poetry, and the chapbook This City (Floating Bridge Press). Her most recent non-fiction is in There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis (Vintage). Born in El Salvador she came to the United States in 1981. Living in English and Spanish, Claudia writes and teaches in Seattle on unceded Duwamish lands where she gardens and keeps chickens with her husband and their three children.
The Main Course: Poets Writing About Food Through With The Haibun with Anastacia-Renée
This is a fact.
If you get right
down to it the new
unprocessed peanut
butter is no damn
good & you should
buy it in a jar as
always in the
largest supermarket
you know.
-Eileen Miles
In this workshop we will examine our cultural, familial, spiritual and communal connections to food. We will read and discuss food poetry written by: Li-Young-Lee, Jane Wong, and Eileen Miles. Participants will create a poem using aspects around or rooted in food. We will “cook” together by writing responses to recipes, historical facts about spices, and sharing stories about food. Workshop participants will leave with one draft poem.
Anastacia-Reneé is a writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, TEDx Speaker and podcaster. She is the author of (v.) (Black Ocean) and Forget It (Black Radish) and, Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere and Sidenotes from the Archivist forthcoming from Amistad (an imprint of HarperCollins). Recently she was selected by NBC News as part of the list of "Queer Artist of Color Dominate 2021's Must See LGBTQ Art Shows." Anastacia-Renee was former Seattle Civic Poet (2017-2019), Hugo House Poet-in-Residence (2015-2017) and Arc Artist Fellow (2020). Her work has been anthologized in: Home is Where You Queer Your Heart, Furious Flower Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Afrofuturism, Black Comics, And Superhero Poetry, Spirited Stone: Lessons from Kubota’s Garden, and Seismic: Seattle City of Literature. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in, Hobart, Foglifter, Auburn Avenue, Catapult, Alta, Torch, Poetry Northwest, Cascadia Magazine, Ms. Magazine and others. Renee has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Ragdale, Mineral School, and The New Orleans Writers Residency.
CATCHING UP WITH INTERIM BOARD PRESIDENT, LAURA WELTER
Photo by Mimi Carroll
How did you get involved with MCWC?
My friend Norma Watkins bought me a cup of coffee one morning a few months after I’d retired. She said her days on the MCWC board were coming to an end, and would I join up and take over her “volunteer manager” role? She said, “You’re not a writer, but you’re a reader.” I had heard Norma talking about this great conference for 30 years, so I knew it was something worthwhile.
What is your favorite thing about MCWC?
The Thursday evening gathering, when I ask conference attendees how their first day went. The positive responses have been unanimous.
What are you excited about for MCWC this year?
Meeting the faculty. They tend to be interesting people who feel ready to socialize in this setting. Our small town makes it an easy place to relax. No traffic jams to struggle through, so plenty of time to interact with other writers.
Where do you find creative inspiration?
In my yard. I love succulents, especially, and grow all kinds of them. They look like sculptures and are self-reliant. My yard provides me with endless opportunities to be creative while discovering what nature has in mind for these plants. Then I throw in a smattering of yard art, if my collection of 41 bowling balls can be called a smattering.
What are you reading?
I am re-reading one of my favorites by Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin. It’s two stories in one, and she is masterful at weaving them together. This month my book group read The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray about the black woman who passed for white throughout her amazing career as the curator for J.P. Morgan’s library. Another recent read, Joy Enough by Sarah McColl, was a well-crafted memoir that told of the end of her marriage, happening simultaneously with the end of her mother’s life. I look forward to meeting Sarah at our MCWC 2023 conference as she will be teaching the memoir workshop. Finally, I recently traveled to Maine and had some very long stretches to breeze though two John Grisham novels. Perfect for airport layovers!
SUBMIT YOUR WORK
Lake County publication, The Bloom, invites literary submissions. Contributing writers are paid. Submit your work here.
OTHER NEWS
MCWC 2022 participant Jasmine Sawers’ debut collection, The Anchored World, is now available to purchase via Rose Metal Press.
Don't forget, if you have news you'd like to share with the MCWC community, please send it to news@mcwc.org.
FUNDRAISING FOR MCWC 2023 IS UNDERWAY!
As we finalize our plans for next year’s conference, we need your support! If you’d like to help support the organization or a scholarship, please consider making a donation.
Stay tuned for our next 2023 faculty update in December. Until next time, happy writing!
- The MCWC Team