TIN HOUSE WRITERS CONFERENCE

Last summer, I attended the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop--a one week intensive of workshops, readings, panels, and lectures. It was a wonderful experience. Reed College was jammed with enthusiastic writers and a good spirit of creativity pervaded the workshops and readings--and just hanging out under the trees. Writers included Denis Johnson, Dorothy Allison, Steve Almond, Aimee Bender, Charles D'Ambrosio, Anthony Doerr, Nick Flynn, Walter Kirn, and Colson Whitehead.

They just finished this years' conference, and that's where this film comes from. If you write fiction, memoir, or poetry, by all means apply for next year. By the way, Tin House is also a highly regarded literary magazine that features the best writing out there. Pick it up at the newstand.

Check out Tin House.

THE HULA HOOP DANCE

Tin House ended last night with bleary-eyed writers smoking, drinking, dancing, nursing wounds, swapping email addresses, and planning cab rides to the airport. A DJ played soul music. One tired dancer swayed just fast enough to keep her hula hoop aloft, giving the impression of some sad Saturn gradually surrendering to entropy. After an intense week of readings, workshops, lectures, Q and A sessions, networking, interviews with agents, singalongs, meal tickets, and lack of sleep, the hula hoop dance was a metaphor. It mirrored our exhaustion and refusal to surrender. We would leave without a magic bullet, without an amulet, armed only with the knowledge that others like us were scattered across this weatherbeaten planet practicing the exacting art of storytelling. By midnight it was vague and blurry--something about truth and memory--but even when I said my goodbyes and staggered to my car fishing for my keys I could have told you one thing: there was work to do. Not right then, thank God. But soon, and forever. Fuckin' A!


Colson Whitehead guided our workshop of twelve writers. He is bright, clever, shy, direct, a good writer and teacher. Here he is, sans dreadlocks, on the second half of this Charlie Rose show. Read his opinion piece in the New York Times here.

WRITE NAKED

Another day at writing camp. I'm still amazed at the caliber of writing not only in the faculty here at Tin House, which would be expected, but also in my fellow students. In my small workshop group most or all are published fiction writers, and many teach writing on the college level--but I won't hold that against them.

Some complain that the proliferation of MFA writing programs results in homogenized and lackluster work that is competent but takes no risks, and I tend to agree, but the academics have brought some amazing stories--and so have the civilians who haven't gone the conventional route. School doesn't seem to be the deciding factor here. I guess the caliber of work reflects the edgy, barn-storming intelligence of Tin House Magazine (and those drawn to it) more than it reflects the current state of conventional writing programs.

Some of us read in the amphitheater this evening, under the trees, by a duck pond. It felt good. Later, there were faculty readings. I was especially amazed by Charles D'Ambrosio. Go buy his work to see how it's done.

Denis Johnson, National Book Award Winner 2007

Todays writing advice comes from Denis Johnson, author of Jesus' Son and Tree of Smoke, and guest here at Tin House:

"Write naked, write in exile, write in blood."

In our ongoing writers' week, here is the master of footnotes and endnotes in MLA style, David Foster Wallace.