May 19-21, 2006
Is it possible to write about ourselves in a way that touches others and reminds them of our fundamental connectedness? Can we describe an intensely personal event without being narcissistic or luridly confessional? The answer is yes, if we’re willing to leap — with all our passion and fear and longing — into the fire. And that fire is not just a metaphor. It’s as real as our own mysterious existence; as real as a painful moment that has broken, and maybe opened, our hearts.
As we grapple with the elusive meaning of a difficult experience, without embarrassment and without embellishment, we may discover that our writing begins to change, deepen, and move beyond the merely personal. To write this way is hard work. Few sentences come out right the first time, or the second, or the third. But if we’re committed to seeing the process through — editing the words, perhaps, but not the experience itself — we discover that our most private moments can become more than what we thought they were: a shining source of light for others as well as ourselves.
For more than thirty years, The Sun has been publishing the kind of brave and revealing writing that lives up to the magazine’s motto, a line from concentration-camp survivor Viktor Frankl: “What is to give light must endure burning.” This weekend is an invitation to join Sy Safransky, editor and founder of The Sun, and four Sun authors — Chris Bursk, Pat MacEnulty, Sparrow, and Genie Zeiger. We’ll discover the surprising alchemy that occurs when we write in a rigorous and intentional way; when we hide nothing, especially what we most want to hide; when we find the nerve to go back into the fire again and again and again.
This workshop is appropriate for both beginning and experienced writers; the focus will be on the writing process itself, rather than on a critique of finished work. The weekend’s activities include group discussions, author readings, and writing sessions. Please bring a notebook or journal. For more information about The Sun, visit www.thesunmagazine.org.
Chris Bursk is the author of nine books, including The Improbable Swervings of Atoms, winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry, and Ovid at Fifteen, which won the Green Rose Prize from New Issues Press. His latest, The First Inhabitants of Arcadia, is due to be published in spring 2006. Bursk is a professor at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and has taught in the Bucks County correctional system.
Pat MacEnulty is the author of three books of fiction: Sweet Fire, a novel; The Language of Sharks, a short-story collection; and Time to Say Goodbye, a thriller. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and has taught creative writing at all levels, from prison to the university.
Sy Safransky is founder and editor of The Sun.
Sparrow’s poems have appeared in The Sun, the New Yorker, and the New York Times, and Soft Skull Press has published three of his books. He lives with his wife and daughter in a trailer in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Their rabbit, Bananacake, lives in a hutch outside.
Genie Zeiger is the author of three books of poetry and two memoirs. She is also a commentator for NPR and a regular contributor to The Sun. She has led writing workshops for the past eighteen years, sometimes at her home in Shelburne, Massachusetts.