DawesIF YOU'RE ready to get your first book published, then the Calabash Writers Workshop is ready for you.
The workshop is offering full scholarships to study fiction writing and poetry over the course of a year. As a further example of its commitment to transforming the regions literary landscape, the festival will waive the $30,000 tuition fee for all successful applicants. Deadline for application is October 27. For application details visit calabashfestival.org or email Calabashfestival@hotmail.com.
Workshops will be held at the United States (US) Embassy in St Andrew. The US State Department has been a strong supporter of the festival for many years and its commitment continues with the support of the workshop series. Poetry workshops will be led by Kwame Dawes, Louise Fry Scudder Professor at the University of South Carolina. Fiction workshops will be led by Colin Channer, Newhouse visiting professor in creative writing at Wellesley College, in Massachusetts.
The first workshop will be conducted from Friday, November 21 to Sunday, November 23. Each workshop will be limited to 10 participants. Admission will be based solely on the strength and promise of the manuscripts submitted by the applicants.
workshops
Its a very simple idea, says Dawes, who is the workshop director and programming director of the Calabash International Literary Festival Trust, which organises the workshops.
People who attend the Calabash Writers Workshops leave with real results. Marlon James got his book deal for John Crows Devil after attending these workshops. That book was nominated for an LA Times book award and a Commonwealth Writers Prize. James is now a professor of creative writing at one of the best libe-ral arts colleges in the States, and his second book is set for publication at the beginning of next year. Poets who have been a part of these workshops continue to gene-rate good work and publication. The poetry manuscripts of Tanya Shirley and Millicent Graham that were work-shopped in the Calabash Workshop Series are now slated for publication in 2009.
fiction writers
We take care of our writers, says Channer, founder and artistic director of the Calabash trust. Work created by the fiction writers in the first workshop was published in the anthology, Iron Balloons, which was featured in the New York Times. Through the Calabash Chapbook Series, six poets from the earliest poetry workshops saw their name on their own books for the first time.
One of those writers, Ishion Hutchinson, got a full scholarship to do his MFA in poetry at New York University after attending these workshops. Hes now doing his PhD.
