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Taos Summer Writers | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Project Description The Taos Summer Writers' Conference is a week long event held in July each year. The week is filled with workshops, cultural visits and events, readings and a variety of special presentations. For a fee, participants may also schedule a consultation with on of our visiting agents or editors. We have designed our Conference both for working writers and for people getting started on their writing. Our weekend and week-long workshops offer intensive instruction balanced with ample free time. To create the right mixture of group support and individual attention, each workshop is limited to twelve participants. Experienced writers will find peers and mentors here, and beginners can explore a variety of new forms. Approximately 200 participants take workshops in fiction, memoir, poetry, screenwriting and craft-based workshops. About a third of our participants are New Mexican; the rest come from across the country and around the world. Answer excerpted from an article in NEW WEST: 'The conference is set up to facilitate social interaction between all faculty, participants, and guest readers. Faculty interact with participants not only in workshops, but also at conference lunches and dinners, after faculty readings, and even over fish tacos and margaritas at the Guadalajara Grill, a popular spot among conference participants. Also adding to a feeling of community, most faculty and participants stay at the historical Sagebrush Inn or next door at the Comfort Suites. Everyone reads, writes, and socializes in close vicinity to everyone else. Sharon Oard Warner explains, At the Squaw Valley conference everyone is spread out all over the valley. It?s beautiful but secluded; not practical for creating a sense of community by proximity. At Taos, for instance, optional lunches are served every afternoon on the shady flagstone patio by the pool at the Sagebrush. Shuttles run every other day to museums, the Plaza, the Taos Pueblo, and the D.H. Lawrence Ranch, giving writers the opportunity to experience more than the workshops, and to connect to their own sources of inspiration, while enjoying the opportunity to share work, ideas, and time with fellow writers. What?s next for the Taos Summer Writers? Conference? This year Oard Warner, in conjunction with the Albuquerque Teachers' Institute, introduced a new event during the weekend following the Writer Conference. This new program, the Taos Summer Teachers Institute, was designed as an opportunity for New Mexico public school teachers to learn and share ideas about teaching writing and literature in the classroom. Sessions were offered on Shakespeare, playwriting, Native American literature, historical fiction, and poetry. The keynote address was delivered by none other than renowned poet and Chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia. Eligibility None. We offer workshops for beginning to advanced writers. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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