Nov 4-6, 2005
“Writers write what they know. But they do not know what they know until they write it.” — W. H. Auden
To write beautifully and with a sense of fulfillment it is necessary to turn fearlessly to one’s most precious material — the vibrant textures of actual experience. No one but you can author your story. No one else knows it. Writing our stories down, using raw concrete detail, free of loyalty to anyone else’s version of what happened, is an act of exhilarating rebellion. We will do it this weekend.
Writing is art — an alive, creative process ungoverned by rigid rules or the tyranny of thought. For those who wish, there will be time to read one’s work out loud before the ambivalent and frightened editor within has had a chance to interfere. This offers valuable perspective impossible to have while the writing is actually taking place. We read for reaction, not criticism, and hear what our listeners received from our work, what inspired and moved them. The atmosphere creates courage — even brazenness — allowing people to go further and further into their own material.
Fred and Marta, partners in art and marriage, have been leading Authentic Writing groups for many years. Their unique workshops bear amazing fruit. Experienced or professional writers expand and deepen their work as they are led into territory they may have avoided or ignored. For those just setting out, Authentic Writing will ground them in their essential material and give them a solid experience of themselves as writers. Each person will leave with pages of work, material to be polished and transformed into finished pieces, or to leave just as it is, like a bunch of wild flowers pulled up from the ground, the soil still clinging to their roots.
Fred Poole was a writer and journalist working in dangerous lands. He wrote over a dozen books, including a novel Where Dragons Dwell and the exposé Revolution in the Philippines: the U.S. in a Hall of Cracked Mirrors. Responding to growing dissatisfaction, Fred allowed his life to take a more spontaneous and introspective turn: he became an art student and then pursued progressive theological studies. Drawing from his most meaningful experiences as a writer, teacher, artist, and seeker, he created the Authentic Writing Workshops in 1993. Steadfast and sure in assailing the academic traditions that shut down real writing in the name of promoting it, he is undauntingly committed to supporting the writer in each person. After a career as a writer, journalist, and editor. Marta Szabo began a serious pursuit of yoga and meditation. She lived in a yogic monastery for over ten years, including a year and a half in India. Since meeting Fred, she’s pursued her own writing art relentlessly, earning an MFA in Creative Writing, completing two book-length memoirs and several hundred short pieces. She is an imaginative, dynamic, sincere teacher who created “Ink in the Air,” a creative writing radio show, and she edits Friction, a bi-annual journal of writing from the Authentic Writing workshops.