Readings
Sunday, June 6th

6:00-7:00pm

Welcome Reading: An Evening of Love

Alexander Weinstein & Leonard A. Slade Jr.

Join Director Alexander Weinstein and MVICW Poet Fellow Dr. Leonard A. Slade Jr. for the opening ceremonies of the 2021 MVICW Summer Writers’ Conference.  Alexander Weinstein will be opening the program with a reading from his short story collection, Universal Love, followed by Dr. Slade who will be reading from his recent poetry collection, Selected Poems for Freedom, Peace, and Love.

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This event is free and open to the public! Register here: bit.ly/mv21sunday

All Genres
Monday, June 7th

10:00-12:00pm

The Writer, The Slacker & The Inner Critic

Alexander Weinstein

As we grow as writers, both professionally and artistically, it's vital to continue to approach the page with a sense of play, curiosity, and wonder. We will discuss various ways to keep this sense of play alive in our writing. In turn we will look at the benefits of literary experiments, the art of taking risks, and explore the "big projects" we've been longing to tackle and how to bring them to the page successfully. This is a class for writers of all genres.

Poetry
Monday, June 7th

2:00-4:00pm

Prose Poem & the Very Short Poem

Keith Taylor 

When French writers started creating things they called "prose poems" they were looking for a way to get the lyric intensity of poetry into short prose fragments. At the same time, American writers were writing stories that kept getting shorter yet still used the techniques of fiction. At some point the genres began blurring. Some of us have found that blurry uncertain place to be very productive! We’ll look at examples, try to find distinctions, and create our own new work in these forms.

Fiction
Monday, June 7th

2:00-4:00pm

The Place Where You Come Alive

Joshunda Sanders

Maybe it’s nostalgia. Maybe you have always just fantasized about a particular place. Maybe your characters just like to haunt you from a place that you happen to truly love. No matter your story, or the story with your characters, setting can be as important to hone in your fiction work as character or plot. How can we best use our senses and obsession with place to help our fiction come alive? What are the places we have traveled to that remain in our hearts? What are the details of these places from which we can draw inspiration? In this class, we will read selections from fiction by authors like Edward P. Jones (The Known World) and Ling Ma (Severance) that include beautiful descriptions of place, and we will work on developing our own sense of place in our writing.

CNF 

Monday, June 7th

2:00-4:00pm

The Lyric Essay: An Introduction

Christopher Citro

About this popular hybrid essay form, Deborah Tall and John D'Agata write, "[Lyric essays] forsake narrative line, discursive logic, and the art of persuasion in favor of idiosyncratic meditation…" The lyric essay partakes of the poem in its density and shapeliness, its distillation of ideas and musicality of language. It partakes of the essay in its weight, in its overt desire to engage with facts, melding its allegiance to the actual with its passion for imaginative form." In this class we'll explore as writers this experimental genre that combines the nonfiction nature of a personal essay with the lyric possibilities of poetry. We'll try out some exercises and prompts to get us along the exciting and playful path to creating our own lyric essay.

Readings
Monday, June 7th

6:00-7:00pm

Evening Readings

Amelia Martens & Wendy Rawlings

Join us for an intimate reading of new and published works by our Visiting Writers

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This event is free and open to the public! Register here: bit.ly/mv21monday

Open Mics
Monday, June 7th

8:00-10:00pm

Late Night Lounges

Hosted by Joseph Yoon, Janan Alexandra, Tessa Yang & Lara Ehrlich

Virtual Late-Night Lounges are hosted by previous MVICW alumni.  Attendees can sign up in advance to read their work and spend an evening sharing their writing with one another. Late Night Lounges are open to all, and attendees are welcome to participate as audience or as performers.

Poetry
Tuesday, June 8th

10:00-12:00pm

Loss & Love

Britton Shurley

These two big themes, like birth and death, are parts of life we all must experience. No wonder they’re the subject of countless works of art. In this class, we’ll examine how other writers have used these themes in many different ways to create moving, memorable poems. We’ll remember our loves and losses, learning how our own unique experiences can be used to write the universal.

Fiction 
Tuesday, June 8th

10:00-12:00pm

Writing Desire, or Lack Thereof

Tia Clark

We’re taught our characters must "want and want intensely," but what does that mean for the character who is depressed, lives on the sidelines, or struggles to recognize their own desires? This class will dive into the elements of character development, and how to bring your characters to life through description of their inner worlds as well as their outer--transforming intangible desires to tangible needs that pop on the page. We will explore the many layers of desire and how to use it as a tool to drive character and plot.

CNF
Tuesday, June 8th

10:00-12:00pm

The New Shell: An Intro to the Hermit Crab Essay

Christopher Citro

Like the feisty crustaceans after which they are named, hermit crab essays, in the words of Brenda Miller, "appropriate other forms of writing as an outer covering, to protect their soft, vulnerable underbelly." In this class we'll read samples of recent hermit crab essays—a hybrid form of the lyric essay which uses the shell of an existing kind of writing, such as a recipe or questionnaire. We'll gain an acquaintance with this popular new form of the personal essay, then use prompts drawn from our readings to inspire us in our own writing journey.

Poetry
Tuesday, June 8th

2:00-4:00pm

Ode to Joy

Britton Shurley

The "news" most days is bad, and our eyes are drawn to disaster. But as writers we can’t forget beauty, those bright moments of joy so often dulled by the dark. In this session, we’ll focus on finding beauty in unexpected places, exploring how to catch more clearly this flash and dance more freely on the page.

Fiction
Tuesday, June 8th

2:00-4:00pm

Writing the Tarot

Tia Clark

The Major Arcana of traditional tarot decks tells us of a Fool’s Journey, from stepping out into a new world, to reaching satisfaction and completion. While used for divination and self-reflection, tarot cards can also be a useful tool for writing. Is your character being too much of a Hermit for anything exciting to happen? Does your plot need a Chariot to get it from point A to point B? In this session, we will use the tarot for in-class exercises to jump start our writing, and explore how it can be used outside of the class to facilitate the writing process.

CNF
Tuesday, June 8th

2:00-4:00pm

The Braided Essay: An Introduction

Robert James Russell

The braided essay can be an effective, at-the-ready tool in a writer's toolbox, freeing you, the writer, to focus more on content than form. These essays juxtapose not just different strands of ideas that share a common theme, but can showcase different POVs and disparate narratives to create rich, wholly unique essays. Any writer can come up with bits and pieces they find interesting; what makes this form truly sing is finding loosely-related events (historical, biographical, fantastical) and getting them to speak to one another to make a single, coherent narrative that shines brighter than any one segment. This form can also be a great way to help break through writer’s block by using free-association to write your way into solid thematic connections. In this class, we’ll look at samples of braided essays,talk about what each accomplishes and how, then use prompts to discover and share our own strands—and how they can tell a single, glorious story.

Readings
Tuesday, June 8th

6:00-7:00pm

Evening Readings

Phong Nguyen & Joshunda Sanders

Join us for an intimate reading of new and published works by our Visiting Writers.

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This event is free and open to the public! Register here: bit.ly/mv21tuesday

Open Mics
Tuesday, June 8th

8:00-10:00pm

Late Night Lounges

Hosted by Tessa Yang, Janan Alexandra & GG Silverman

Virtual Late-Night Lounges are hosted by previous MVICW alumni.  Attendees can sign up in advance to read their work and spend an evening sharing their writing with one another. Late Night Lounges are open to all, and attendees are welcome to participate as audience or as performers.

Poetry
Wednesday, June 9th

10:00-12:00pm

The Masks We Want

Adrian Matejka

Persona comes from the Latin word for the masks ancient Greek actors used to exaggerate their features during performances. Over the last 30 years, a number of poets have adopted linguistic as a way to create new and unexpected narratives. Persona relies exclusively on voice and we will experiment with some of the different language components that go into developing a unique and surprising mask on the page. 

Fiction
Wednesday, June 9th

10:00-12:00pm

The Second Person POV

Wendy Rawlings

Do you ever wonder why the second person is the most underutilized point of view in writing? Have you thought about using it and decided it’s too gimmicky, too awkward, or too confusing? Who is the narrator talking to: The audience? Her/him/themself? Another character in the piece of writing? We will take a look at some uses of the second person in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and then you’ll try out some second person experiments of your own.

CNF
Wednesday, June 9th

10:00-12:00pm

Nature, Environmental Justice & Climate Change

Keith Taylor

Our recent understandings of climate change and environmental degradations have made our relationship with the natural world more urgent. At the same time, we’ve begun to understand the injustice that forces the poor around the world to be the first people to live with this destruction. As we explore the terrain of nature writing in our own work, we’ll look at examples that continue to put us in awe before the natural world, and others that demand understanding and make a call for action.

Poetry
Wednesday, June 9th

2:00-4:00pm

This is Not a Love Poem Exactly

Adrian Matejka

Every poem is a kind of love poem whether want it to be or not. Sometimes love is the poem’s engine like in an ode. Other times, the poem pushes back to protect something that is loved—an idea, a person, a butterfly or mountain. In this class, we won't be writing love poems exactly, but we will experiment with some of the ways we can use the idea of love as the foundation, foil, or driver of poetry. 

Fiction
Wednesday, June 9th

2:00-4:00pm

Making the Unbelievable Fabulist

Alexander Weinstein

The fiction writer George Saunders turns Twinkies, Ding Dongs and a bag of Doritos into sentient beings. In one of Aimee Bender’s short stories, a man buys a tiny man at a pet store and brings him home to live in a little cage. In James Hannaham’s novel, Delicious Foods, one of the narrators is a crack pipe. How do these writers manage to pull off outlandish feats of fiction? How does inventing the unbelievable in our fiction allow us to get at truths that might not be visible to our readers if we stayed within the realm of realism? And how do we make our inventions, well, believable? We’ll discuss some examples and then try making some of our outlandish ideas believable on the page. Risk takers welcome.

CNF
Wednesday, June 9th

2:00-4:00pm

Salvage the Bones: How to Self-Edit and Revise

Joshunda Sanders

Prose and essay writing tend to incorporate the personal more than other genres, which makes it particularly painful and vulnerable to slash and burn in editing or revision. It is easy to get discouraged and throw away a piece–or just put it in a drawer!–when it feels too hard for whatever reason to revise or edit. For this class, writers will bring a piece that has them stuck or that they might feel sick of so that we can work on seeing it with fresh eyes. This will include writing about the intention behind the piece and its inception, generating a new idea that might be more fresh to revive the idea, the creation of a reverse outline and other tips for revision to salvage the bones of your idea.

Readings
Wednesday, June 9th

6:00-7:00pm

Evening Readings

Christopher Citro & Matthew Gavin Frank

Join us for an intimate reading of new and published works by our Visiting Writers.

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This is free and open to the public! Register here: bit.ly/mv21wednesday

Open Mics
Wednesday, June 9th

8:00-10:00pm

Late Night Lounges

Hosted by Joseph Yoon, Janan Alexandra & GG Silverman

Virtual Late-Night Lounges are hosted by previous MVICW alumni.  Attendees can sign up in advance to read their work and spend an evening sharing their writing with one another. Late Night Lounges are open to all, and attendees are welcome to participate as audience or as performers.

Poetry
Thursday, June 10th

10:00-12:00pm

Who's on First? The Persona Poem at Play

Amelia Martens

We play with persona every day, but what voices or stories might come to us, if we play with persona on the page? The persona poem has a long history of offering insight and access, of moving the spotlight of history over lesser-known figures, or altering an accepted point of view. Our ability to imagine alter-perspectives requires cultivation, and presents a limitless door to deeper understanding of experience.  Using a variety of sources for inspiration, we’ll create, alter, or imagine poems from other voices.

Fiction
Thursday, June 10th

10:00-12:00pm

Building Strong Connective Tissue: Beyond Plot, Character, Setting, and Theme

Phong Nguyen

To craft a lasting story, a writer has to do more than check all the boxes. Does it have a compelling character? Check. Does it have a plot with a strong cause and effect? Check. That kind of editorial checklist will lead to a story that is merely competent. Why is this character in this particular predicament? How does an internal conflict manifest in an external action/setting? Those are the kind of questions that will lead you toward a story that will stick with readers. In this craft talk we will look at the connections between plot and character, between character and setting, and between setting and theme, etc., and strengthen the connective tissue between the various aspects of fiction.

CNF
Thursday, June 10th

10:00-12:00pm

"Turning Away from the Explosion," or, the Power of Association in the Essay

Matthew Gavin Frank

In his piece, "Some Extensions on the Sovereignty of Science," poet and essayist Alberto Rios writes, "When something explodes, / Turn exactly opposite from it and see what there is to see." As essayists, how might we, too, "turn away from the explosion" in order to more fully focus on the associative subject matter lurking in the "opposite" direction?  By "turning away" from the subject matter with which we most urgently want to engage, are we able to capture our subject’s emotive power even more poignantly? 

In this workshop, we will engage the power of association as an entry point into the essay.  We will discuss the ways in which to bridge one’s own personal narratives with seemingly dissimilar researched elements, seeking out, fostering, and sometimes manipulating the connections between them.  We will discuss when, why, and how to digress in order to test the parameters of our own stories, and to grapple toward the situating of said stories within a larger context.

Poetry
Thursday, June 10th

2:00-4:00pm

The Pliable Prose Poem

Amelia Martens

Subversive, surreal, fable, postcard, polaroid, box: the prose poem can be illusive and magically accessible. Instead of trying to pin down this hybrid form, we will examine several manifestations to expand our notion of what is possible in a prose poem. We’ll play with appearance, discover potential source materials, and generate our own poems that bridge the ordinary and the extraordinary.

Fiction
Thursday, June 10th

2:00-4:00pm

Building Character Through Using Hypotheticals

Phong Nguyen

Every story is a hypothetical. What if a group of children raised by wolves were forced into a finishing school? (Karen Russell's "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves") What if a dead aunt came back and tried to fix the mistakes she made in her life by haunting her nieces and nephews? (George Saunders's "Sea Oak") But on the way to writing a successful story, we need to better know our characters. For the purposes of characterization, better than the use of "driver's license details" ("Ken was six feet tall with blue eyes and weighed 180 pounds") or "character sheet details" ("Dinah was skilled at archery, was fluent in Spanish, and enjoyed quilting") is putting your characters through a series of hypotheticals that reveal who they are. In this session, we will be posing questions of our characters-in-development and answering them through various writing exercises.

CNF
Thursday, June 10th

2:00-4:00pm

Toward a "New" Food Writing

Matthew Gavin Frank

So much of our food writing seems interested in engaging food as "easily delicious," as a shortcut to meditations on celebration, ceremony, memory and/or family.  This is certainly one admirable, and familiar, way to engage food, of course.  As opposed to treading this ground, and to seeking out the "easily scrumptious," this workshop will be interested in exploring less familiar avenues by which to engage food and food memories.  

An essay's power can come from its ability to transform one thing into another.  The act of defamiliarization transforms an everyday thing into something a bit stranger and more meaningful.  In defamiliarizing a seemingly mundane object (in this case a foodstuff), the writer takes something familiar and— through playing with imagery, metaphor, research, and other craft techniques—creates a fresh experience of that object/food for the reader; and wonders about the larger "meaning" of that object/food.  

We will begin by accessing some of our most indelible food memories, but then we will further interrogate them (via research and reflection) for their more "secret" implications and histories, while maintaining an element of stylistic sensuality.  

Specialty Class
Thursday, June 10th

2:00-4:00pm

Picture Me: An Introduction to Graphic Memoir and Comic-Making

Robert James Russell

It’s undeniable that graphic narratives and memoir are having a moment—certain stories can only be told with panels and images, and finding art communities on social media is a great way to help build and sustain your craft. Sometimes words alone just won’t do: graphic narratives are a great way to flesh out personal stories, to whittle down grander ideas, and for writers, to experiment in a secondary genre in order to develop richer storytelling techniques. In this class, we’ll look at sample comics, discuss the basics of graphic memoir and comics-making, and how to create a good flow of panels and/or pages. We will then use prompts to start making our own short comics together. Artists at all levels are welcome—even those with no experience at all! Just bring something to draw with and an open mind!

Readings
Thursday, June 10th

6:00-7:00pm

Evening Readings

Tia Clark, Britton Shurley & Robert James Russell

Join us for an intimate reading of new and published works by our Visiting Writers.

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This event is free and open to the public! Register here: bit.ly/mv21thursday

Open Mics
Thursday, June 10th

8:00-10:00pm

Late Night Lounges

Hosted by Joseph Yoon, Tessa Yang, GG Silverman & Su Cho

Virtual Late-Night Lounges are hosted by previous MVICW alumni.  Attendees can sign up in advance to read their work and spend an evening sharing their writing with one another. Late Night Lounges are open to all, and attendees are welcome to participate as audience or as performers.

Publishing
Friday, June 11th

10:00-12:00pm

A Good Fit: Editing, Publishing, and Sustaining Yourself in the Writing Community

Robert James Russell

In this class, we’ll look at how to ready your writing for publication—how to finalize edits and make sure you’re presenting the most polished work—as well as discuss the publishing landscape, how to find journals, publishers, and editors you want to work with, red flags to keep an eye out for, and what it means to be a good literary citizen, all while being authentic to yourself and your art. Bring your questions, and be ready to dig deep!

Poetry
Friday, June 11th

10:00-12:00pm

The Poetry Book as Architecture

Christopher Citro

In this class we'll discuss the challenging, joyful process of putting together a poetry book manuscript for publication: things to think about before you begin, tips to help you gather your poems together, strategies for ordering poems, suggestions for how to listen to your book talk back to you as it comes to life. We'll explore how to tinker with your finished manuscript as it continues to grow, and we'll share strategies to help your book reach the ultimate goal of publication. Your instructor will share with you in detail his journey of putting together his two published poetry books. We'll enjoy a hands-on exercise about ordering poems for a book, and we'll end with a Q&A for questions about manuscript structuring and navigating the complex process of poetry book contests and other steps along the path to your book finding its home!

Publishing 
Friday, June 11th

10:00-12:00pm

Agents, The Book Deal & Beyond

Alexander Weinstein

You’ve made the final edits on your novel, memoir, or short story collection—so now what?  How do you begin the process of seeking an agent, what kinds of questions should you be asking, and what about the next stage: finding a publisher that will be a good home for your work? This course is designed for fiction and creative nonfiction writers who are ready to seek publication, have questions about seeking film/translation for their work, or are navigating post-publication life. It will also lay out the terrain of what happens beyond the Book Deal, how to assess the long-term health of your agent relationship, and how to create a nourishing writing practice as you write your second/third/fourth books.

Panel Discussion
Friday, June 11th

2:00-4:00pm

The Writer's Life

Alexander Weinstein, Adrian Matejka, Matthew Gavin Frank, Wendy Rawlings & Joshunda Sanders

This panel discussion will address the joys and dilemmas of writing, along with the techniques the visiting writers use to pursue their profession. We will talk about what methods have worked for us in establishing a regular writing practice and how to remain inspired in one’s daily life, followed by a Q&A with attendees.

Panel Discussion
Friday, June 11th

2:00-4:00pm

Podcasts, Self-Publishing & Promotion for the Post-Conference World

 Lara Ehrlich, Evan Schwartz, Kaia Preus, Christopher Citro & Robert James Russell

Join us for a panel discussion!

Panel Discussion
Friday, June 11th

2:00-4:00pm

Writing Even When it Isn't Fun: On Writer's Block & Inspiration

Phong Nguyen, Amelia Martens, Britton Shurley, Keith Taylor & Tia Clark

Join us for a panel discussion!

Readings
Friday, June 11th

6:00-7:00pm

Evening Readings

Adrian Matejka & Keith Taylor

Join us for an intimate reading of new and published works by our Visiting Writers.

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This event is free and open to the public! Register here: bit.ly/mv21friday

Open Mics
Friday, June 11th

8:00-10:00pm

Late Night Lounges

Hosted by Tessa Yang, Evan Schwartz, Su Cho & Lindsay Olson

Virtual Late-Night Lounges are hosted by previous MVICW alumni.  Attendees can sign up in advance to read their work and spend an evening sharing their writing with one another. Late Night Lounges are open to all, and attendees are welcome to participate as audience or as performers.

Saturday & Sunday
By Appointment

Manuscript Sessions

Sign-up during Registration

Register for the conference with a 45-minute one-on-one virtual meeting to focus on your poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction. Learn more and register for a manuscript session here!