SAVE THE DATES! An Announcement from the 2020 Alumni Conference Coordinator, Jennifer Funk
2020 ALUMNI WRITING CONFERENCE INFORMATION
Please pull out your phones, your calendars (I know we have some analog folks, myself included), a spare napkin/post-it/receipt or whatever you have on hand as these are a few dates and details you’re going to want to notate.
Alumni Conference. 2020. July 11 – 18 (short stay 14 -18). Mount Holyoke College.
Once and yet again, we shall have the precious pleasure of convening ourselves under the large shade trees and within those crisp brick buildings to workshop, review manuscripts, convene for classes and panels and readings. There will be ample opportunity, too, to revel in the superlative company of those who know just where you are coming from, not to mention company that will affectionately ignore you as much as you have need if you want to skip it all in favor of taking time to write.
If you’ve already been, I hardly need continue this pitch.
If you’ve not yet been, the above should be proof enough, but here are a few testimonials:
“A conference is not a residency without faculty and it’s not a reunion. It’s a small summer oasis filled with peers who will amaze and encourage you, with laughter, with as much or as little work as you’d like. But the very best part of the conferences is meeting Wallys who were in the program at different times over many years – creating a lovely confusion of dates and faces…So come. You’ll be happy. You’ll be surprised.”
–Nancy Koerbel
“Each [conference] is a revelation, a tremendous gift of time to work and a community in which to celebrate that gift. It maintains the very best of the residencies at Warren Wilson and jettisons all the rest. It revitalizes and inspires every time. I can’t remember a single moment at an alumni conference when I did not feel like the luckiest person on the planet.”
–Michael Jarmer
As someone who attended their first alumni conference shortly after graduating from the program, may I also offer that there is a specific thrill in meeting your compatriots out of context in part. Yes? Marvelous. The conference reminds you of the other great legacy you are a part of (aside from the whole writing tradition thing), which is to say this magnificent and enduring program of study. The conference also called to mind the reassurance that a writing life really is long-term endeavor, is the work of a whole life. I left both eager to work and yet no longer in a rush to merely fix the problems in my work, but to engage with them, to understand them.
–accidental testimonial of Jennifer Funk, this year’s coordinator
Information about fees and scholarships and other business bits forthcoming.
