The table is set for our twin bill 2011 Key West Literary Seminar: THE HUNGRY MUSE: An Exploration of Food in Literature. Panelists have been apportioned to one of two (or in some cases, both) sessions. Here's how the menu is shaping up:

Session One: January 6 - 9, 2011
Diana Abu-Jaber, Roy Blount Jr., Frank Bruni, Billy Collins, Jason Epstein, Jonathan Gold, Darra Goldstein, Daniel Halpern, Madhur Jaffrey, Judith Jones, Harry Mathews, Bich Minh Nguyen, Molly O'Neill, Julia Reed, Ruth Reichl, Calvin Trillin, and Kevin Young

Session Two: January 13 - 16, 2011
Elizabeth Berg, Roy Blount Jr., Kate Christensen, Billy Collins, John T. Edge, Adam Gopnik, Gael Greene, Jane Hirshfield, Madhur Jaffrey, Mark Kurlansky, David Mas Masumoto, Nicole Mones, Molly O'Neill, Michael Ruhlman, and Calvin Trillin

We may add a few more panelists over the summer. Speakers and session assignments will be announced as they're added to the roster-- right here on Littoral, and also on our Speakers page, where you can see all of our current speakers, with links to their biographies, bibliographies, and other information from around the Web.

You are welcome to attend either or both sessions of the Seminar, which run from Thursday to Monday. If you are interested in registering for the Seminar, we urge you to act soon, as seats do fill quickly. We will hold your space for a deposit of $100. Click here to register.

The Key West Literary Seminar offers three annual awards to emerging writers of exceptional merit living in the United States. The Joyce Horton Johnson Fiction Award, the Marianne Russo Award, and the Scotti Merrill Memorial Award each provide full tuition to our January Seminar and Writers' Workshop Program, round-trip airfare, seven nights' lodging, support for living expenses while in Key West, and the opportunity to appear on stage during the Seminar.

Past KWLS award-winners include Patricia Engel (Marianne Russo Award, 2009), whose debut story collection, Vida, is coming from Grove/Atlantic this Fall; and Nami Mun (Joyce Horton Johnson Fiction Award, 2008), who went on the publish the critically acclaimed Miles From Nowhere.

In addition to these named awards, we provide limited financial assistance, primarily in the form of fee reductions, to teachers, librarians, writers, and students who would otherwise not be able to attend the Seminar or Writers' Workshop Program. We may also provide discounted lodging options to a small number of applicants.

The application window for the 2011 awards and financial assistance program is now open; complete information will be found here.

Course offerings for our January 2011 Writers' Workshop Program have been announced. Faculty will include NPR's "voice of books," Alan Cheuse, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, and PEN/Faulkner Foundation co-founder Susan Shreve. Each workshop has its own unique focus, ranging from poetry to memoir writing to fiction to oral storytelling. In line with the theme for our 29th annual Seminar, "The Hungry Muse," many of this year's workshops will also consider the role of food as creative inspiration.

Our Workshop Program is designed to provide writers at all stages of development with various opportunities to explore the craft of writing, and each class is limited to between 8 and 12 participants to ensure individual attention. Workshops are generally four days in length and cost $450. They usually take place in the morning, and include optional afternoon and evening activities, including manuscript consultations, informal talks, and open readings. An orientation dinner is provided on January 9.

The Workshop Program is distinct from the Seminar; you may attend either or both. This year's workshops take place January 9-13, in between the first and second sessions of the Seminar. Visit our Writers' Workshop Program page for complete information about each workshop.

We are delighted to announce a collaboration with The Poetry Foundation that presents recordings from the Key West Literary Seminar audio archives to a much larger audience. The Chicago-based foundation is one of the largest literary foundations in the world, the publisher of the historic Poetry magazine, and the creator of poetryfoundation.org- arguably the most comprehensive resource for readers of poetry on the web.

Among the Foundation's online initiatives are nine podcast series, including iTunes's top-ranked poetry podcast Poetry Off the Shelf, an offbeat exploration of contemporary American poetry hosted by Curtis Fox. A recent episode, "Worshipful Company of Snowbirds," features a recording of poet James Tate at the 2003 Seminar, with commentary by Fox and KWLS media director Arlo Haskell. Other Foundation podcasts include the monthly Poetry Lecture Series, which features talks given by notable scholars and critics on poets, poetry, and their intersections with other art forms. The current episode is Mark Doty's keynote address from the 2008 Seminar, "Tide of Voices." We're told these two KWLS recordings have already been listened to by more than 20,000 people on the Foundation's website.

We're grateful to Cathy Halley, Jim Sitar, and all the good people at The Poetry Foundation for making this possible. We hope it is the beginning of a long and happy collaboration that will help bring KWLS audio to even more educators, students, and readers worldwide.

Browse all podcasts from The Poetry Foundation

Subscribe to KWLS Audio Archives in iTunes

"Clearing the Sill of the World," the 28th annual Key West Literary Seminar, was an extraordinary event. Seven U.S. Poets Laureate joined as many winners of the Pulitzer Prize, along with up-and-coming poetic talents and a truly remarkable audience of readers, writers, teachers, and poetry lovers of all stripe. Unseasonal rain and record low (sub-50°!) temperatures kept everyone away from the beach but it was just as well. This was an event you didn't want to miss a moment of. Some highlights:



Pulitzer Prize winners James Tate and Yusef Komunyakaa, along with Rita Dove, Maxine Kumin, and Robert Pinsky, took part in a panel discussion on Saturday morning entitled "A Poet's View: My Life in Poetry."



Tate and Komunyakaa had each other and the house laughing, as they discussed the perils of identifying one's self as a poet.



Komunyakaa: "Gender plays a part in it. You get these weird looks from other guys, you know, 'You write poetry!?'"



Tate: "I got to a certain point in life where I finally just said, 'Yeah, why not? I'm a poet."



New Yorker poetry editor Paul Muldoon delivered a lecture and reading on the subject of "The Borderline." The moving account touched on Muldoon's boyhood in divided Ireland, the plight of a troubled schoolmate-turned-soldier, and Muldoon's appreciation for poetry that brings one up to and across borders.



On Sunday morning, Erica Dawson read a number of poems from her Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize-winning debut collection, Big-Eyed Afraid.



Fellow Poets Laureate Mark Strand and Richard Wilbur discussed the art of translation on Saturday afternoon with Rachel Hadas, Rhina Espaillat, and Robert Casper.



This year's named scholarships went to (from left to right), fiction writer Andrew Alexander, poet George Green, and poet Will Dowd.



A highlight for many in the audience was former Poet Laureate Maxine Kumin's "The Long Approach." The Sunday-morning lecture recounted the trials she and other women writers faced early in her career, explored the influences behind her long career as a formalist poet, and expounded on the joys of a life raising horses on a farm in New Hampshire.



Three-time Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky delivered Thursday night's keynote address, given each year in honor of noted novelist and World War II correspondent John Hersey.



Saturday afternoon saw Harvey Shapiro reading from his body of work, and talking about his poetic upbringing alongside the likes of George Oppen and Louis Zukofsky.



Todd Boss moderated a number of panels, led a writers' workshop, and read a selection of his work on Sunday.



Billy Collins gave a stellar early Saturday-morning reading of old favorites and unpublished work, including a new piece tentatively titled "The Hangover."



Kirby Congdon talked about his life and work.



Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey read movingly from her work on Saturday, and participated in the final panel Sunday afternoon





Rita Dove's stunning "How Does a Shadow Shine" weaved several poems from her latest Sonata Mulattica together with accounts of the real life of its protagonist, the 18th-century black violin prodigy George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower.

Photos by Sharon McGauley.

Thanks to Bonnie Obremski for the quotes from Tate and Komunyakaa.

Photographer Curt Richter partnered with the Key West Literary Seminar for the third consecutive year to continue work on his series of portraits of American writers. Below is a sampling of the work Richter created this January in his temporary portrait studio at the San Carlos Institute.

Longtime Seminar volunteer Nick Vagnoni captured dozens of unique behind-the-scenes shots of this year's Key West Literary Seminar with his fisheye lens. This year's podium, above, was designed by Needham-Fatica, who also produced the printed program, and developed the KWLS website.



The auditorium of the San Carlos Institute, completed in 1924, seats nearly 400. With record-low sub-50° temperatures throughout the Seminar weekend, this was a good thing, as almost no one sought the usual escapes of sun, sea, and sand.



This year's set, designed by Michael Boyer of the Waterfront Playhouse, was an abstraction of Key West's vernacular architecture. A facade of louvered shutters opened onto window-scenes of subtropical flora and fauna, supported by distinctive gingerbread and spindly balustrades.



Melody Cooper and Dan Simpson, a.k.a. Private Ear, sat here, once again expertly handling sound recording and engineering for the Seminar and various receptions.



With an eye toward next year's Seminar on food in literature, famed cocktailier Jason Rowan flew in at the last minute to raise the bar with his inimitable libations. Recipes for a Richard Wilbur-inspired hot toddie and more can be found at his Embury Cocktails.



The view from the podium. Stagefright, anyone?

Photos by Nick Vagnoni.

photo by Nick Vagnoni

The final day of the 28^th Annual Key West Literary Seminar concluded with a panel discussion led by Timothy Steele on "the necessity of poetry." Panelists Erica Dawson, Rhina Espaillat, Rachel Hadas, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Natasha Tretheway were in accord regarding its essential nature. Poetry is a win-win, Hadas said. It is dynamic and a pleasure from all vantage points; writing, reading, teaching, studying, translating.

 

The topic was approached from a personal standpoint as well as a more universal perspective. Dawson began by saying how grateful she was to live in a world where events such as the Seminar make it possible to bring people together over a collective love for poetry. She also expressed the desire for poetry to be even more central in our culture. This was a sentiment echoed by many of the panelists. Dawson also said that poetry saved her. It was her way of organizing her thoughts and emotions in a productive manner. Hadas agreed that poetry is sometimes a life raft of language.

 

Hadas brought up Steele's point, made earlier in the Seminar, that people call upon poetry in difficult times as well as joyous times. It is a place where the public meets the private. Poetry, and all forms of literature, reminds us that we're not alone, that others have been through the same trials of life. It reminds us that the world is bigger than we are. Espaillat added that it is the glue between individuals.

 

Throughout the seminar, the topic of teaching poetry to children at an early age was emphasized. Many said that poetry was not taught to them explicitly until the college level. Espaillat called for the nurturing of a "culture of amateurs," which she recognized tends to have a negative connotation. In fact, Espaillat explained, an amateur is a lover of something. Poetry and art must be intrinsic in our culture.

photo by Curt Richter

The John Malcolm Brinnin Memorial Event commanded a full house at the San Carlos Institute last night to pay tribute to Richard Wilbur, in whose honor this year's Seminar is being held. The evening began with a performance of two songs from the Broadway musical "Candide" by local singers Bruce Moore and Sandy Walters, accompanied by pianist Vincent Zito. First produced in 1956, Wilbur collaborated to write the lyrics with composer Leonard Bernstein and playwright Lillian Hellman.

 

Wilbur took the stage and was greeted by a standing ovation. He wintered and wrote in Key West beginning in the 1960s, and so he began the evening with a Key West poem, "Security Lights, Key West." The poem likens the "glare of halogen" on the yards of a quiet block to "the settings of some noble play." The "pitch-black houses," he concedes, may be the site of great drama, as well.

 

He went on to read two tender poems about love and his late wife, "For Charlee" and "The House." He also read from his forthcoming book, "The Anteroom." A portion of this book is dedicated to Wilbur's translations of riddles, and it was with great animation that he shared a few with the crowd. The riddle is a great from, he said, which unfortunately is usually seen only in nursery rhymes.

 

He went on to read his poem, "The Writer," for which the name of this year's seminar has borrowed his line "clearing the sill of the world." It was a great pleasure to hear him read this poem about his daughter,

 

In her room at the prow of the house

Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,

My daughter is writing a story.

 

He concluded the night's reading with short poems from his children's book "The Disappearing Alphabet." In this, he illustrates how detrimental the loss of a single letter would be. "For instance, any self respecting DUCK/ Would rather be extinct than be an UCK."

 

The evening ended with another standing ovation and murmurings from the audience for more. Afterwards, the crowd assembled at the historic Custom House for cocktails and dessert where Wilbur mingled amongst poets, readers, and writers.

Mark Strand and Richard Wilbur.


Robert Pinsky and Rita Dove.


James Tate and Yusef Komunyakaa.


Paul Muldoon.

Photos by Sharon McGauley.

Billy Collins spoke this morning on the relationship between poet and reader. This relationship is intimate and one that Collins is acutely aware of when writing. The maximum occupancy for a lyrical poem, Collins said, is two, the poet and the reader.

 

He divided contemporary poetry into two camps. The first is poetry where the poet is aware of the reader's presence, and in the second he is not. The first are dogs, the second cats, he illustrated in metaphor. For Collins poetry is a social encounter. He makes a practice of including a prefatory poem in each of his books explicitly acknowledging the connection between poet and reader.

 

On a note to poetic form as discussed yesterday, Collins said that form is what makes poetry sociable by including the reader. Free verse also has formal properties, he said. In his revision process, he often alternates between writer and reader in order to check his self-expressive urges with an objective other.

 

In his writing workshops, he will often tell his students, "Nobody cares about you." Self-expression is wildly overrated. Readers of poetry are interested in the poetry, the poetic form, not the poet. For this reason, a poet's awareness of his reader is critical.

Photo by Sharon McGauley.

 

Mark Strand

Rita Dove

Erica Dawson and Rhina P. Espaillat


James Tate


Richard Wilbur

Photos by Sharon McGauley

photo by Sharon McGauley

Timothy Steele gave a talk yesterday on the pleasures of metrical writing. This was a topic that many of the poets touched on throughout the day in their readings and panel discussions. In fact, Rhina Espaillat quipped that she invented meter as a schoolgirl when she first discovered rhythmical pattern (ta-tum ta-tum ta-tum ta-tum) in the poetry her teacher read. In the same panel, Maxine Kumin was quick to correct Espaillat that she beat her to it ten years prior when she invented meter. This pursuit of shapeliness, form, movement, and music is at the very heart of writing poetry.

For Steele, it is essential that poets today not abandon meter completely. It is not enough for young readers and writers to go back to old masters of verse such as Shakespeare for this metrical pleasure. There must be a spark of emulation from today's living writers for the next generation of poets to use meter in a way that is relevant and modern.

Meter is an enchanting fusion of order and disorder, Steele explained. It is a sensuous purchase on language. Meter is set. Irregularity is presented with words, phrases, and syntax. It is not necessary to analyze rhythm, per se. One can let it happen. Maxine Kumin also noted that form is used and complied with, but also violated.

Yusef Komunyakaa likened poetry to carpentry. In both pursuits there are a particular set of tools at hand to create something that functions. Each is admired for its precision in composition. He noted the visceral use of the hands in both pursuits as messengers of the brain formed through accidental perfection. For Komunyakaa, energy is the soul of poetry.

Steele asserted that meter stops you and asks you to check your inspiration. It is an instrument of discovery. It is meter that gives a poem its shape. Metrical pleasure is what allows a poem to seep into your consciousness time and again, recalling upon it in moments of joy or sorrow.

After the long trip to Key West, the audience for the 28th annual Key West Literary Seminar settles in to the San Carlos for the afternoon registration.



Long-time volunteer Eloise Pratt again helped out at the registration tables. Here, Eloise models a vintage 1989 KWLS sweatshirt.

Photos by Curt Richter

From top to bottom: William Kennedy,
Silas House, Annie Dillard, Billy Collins Photographer Curt Richter arrives in Key West from Helsinki, Finland, this week to continue work on his new series of portraits of American writers.

Richter first visited Key West in 2008 as an Artist in Residence at The Studios of Key West. He set up a temporary portrait studio in the organization's Mango Tree House, where he invited members of the community to sit before his camera. In partnership with the Key West Literary Seminar, Richter also photographed a number of the writers speaking at that year's New Voices Seminar. A selection from hundreds of these portraits resulted in Still and All, a collaborative project combining 20 of Richter's portraits with the literary talents of over a dozen writers, who penned fictional 'biographies' to accompany each portrait. Richter returned for last year's Historical Fiction and the Search for Truth, arranging portrait sessions during the Seminar with writers including Gore Vidal, William Kennedy, and Barry Unsworth, as well as many members of the community.

Richter's growing body of new portraits promises to join his Portrait of Southern Writers as one of our time's compelling photographic records of American writers. We are delighted to welcome him back to Key West and the 28th annual Literary Seminar to continue this important project.

Time permitting, Richter will also be scheduling portraits with members of the community. Attendees of the Seminar may feel free to talk with Richter or Arlo Haskell to coordinate a session.

The program book for 2010 features cover art by Annie Dillard and previously unpublished work by poets including Kay Ryan, Billy Cllins, James Tate, and Paul Muldoon. An extraordinary assembly of American poets will gather for the 28th annual Key West Literary Seminar, January 7-10, 2010. "Clearing the Sill of the World: a celebration of 60 years of American poetry" will feature seven United States Poets Laureate- including Kay Ryan, Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Maxine Kumin, Mark Strand, and Robert Pinsky- along with more than a dozen other top-tier poets including New Yorker poetry editor Paul Muldoon, and Pulitzer Prize winners Yusef Komunyakaa, Natasha Trethewey, and James Tate. Our guest of honor at the four-day Seminar will be Richard Wilbur, himself a former Laureate and the only living poet to have won the Pulitzer Prize twice.

While the majority of the event is sold out, there will be ample room for the public on Sunday January 10, when KWLS presents a free-and-open-to-the-public session. This program, from 2:00-4:00 p.m. at the San Carlos Institute, 516 Duval Street, will feature the laureates Collins, Dove, Strand, Kumin, and Wilbur, as well as Pulitzer Prize winners Komunyakaa and Trethewey. Admission is free of charge, with seating available on a first-come, first-served basis. The public is encouraged to arrive early; a line will begin forming around 1:00 p.m.

The Seminar begins with a keynote address by Robert Pinsky on Thursday January 7 at 7:45 p.m at the San Carlos Institute, 516 Duval Street. Registrants can sign in and pick up their welcome packets at the San Carlos from 1:00 - 5:00 p.m. that same day, and again from 7:00 - 7:30 p.m. A complete schedule of events is available for download here. The complete roster of speakers, including links to biographical information and resources from around the web, is available here. The Writers' Workshop Program will take place January 11-14.

This year's program book features artwork by Annie Dillard, Jack Smith, and Hank Feeley. For the first time, the book also includes new and previously unpublished work– by Kay Ryan, Billy Collins, James Tate, Maxine Kumin, Paul Muldoon, and others.

Littoral will feature live reporting and photography from the Seminar each day. Audio recordings will be available in the weeks following the Seminar.

For more information, call 1-888-293-9291. For media inquiries, including requests for press passes or interviews, write to arlo@kwls.org.

from left to right: Will Dowd, George Green, and Andrew Alexander The 2009-2010 winners of the Key West Literary Seminar's three named scholarships have been announced.

Will Dowd, a poet and MFA student at New York University with a master's in science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been awarded the Scotti Merrill Memorial Scholarship. A 2006 finalist for The Poetry Foundation's Ruth Lilly Fellowship, Dowd's work has been published in Post Road Magazine, 32 Poems, and The Comstock Review.

George Green, an adjunct instructor at Lehman College whose work appears in The Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, is the winner of the Marianne Russo Scholarship. Green is a graduate of Hunter College and The New School, and lives in Manhattan's East Village.

Andrew Alexander, a graduate of Vassar College and the Center for Writers in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, has won the Joyce Horton Johnson Fiction Award. A resident of Atlanta, Alexander's work has appeared in The Sun, The Mississippi Review, and The Chicago Quarterly Review, among other publications.

Winners of the Key West Literary Seminar's named scholarships receive full financial support to attend the Seminar and Writers' Workshop Program, and the opportunity to present their work during the Seminar program. The awards also cover travel and lodging expenses, and provide a stipend while in Key West. This year's poetry finalists were judged by special guest judge and New Yorker poetry editor Paul Muldoon. Fiction entries were judged by KWLS 2010 Program Chair Liz Lear and Robert D. Richardson, author of biographies of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

In addition to the named scholarships, KWLS provides limited financial support to teachers, librarians, and writers who would not otherwise be able to attend the Seminar and/or Writers' Workshop Program. In all, more than 50 scholarships were given this year, at a value of nearly $35,000. The program is made possible by endowments established by Joyce Johnson, Peyton Evans and The Rodel Charitable Foundation-Florida, and The Dogwood Foundation; by the ongoing support of Judy Blume's KIDS Fund; and by the KWLS board of directors and the many individuals who support the organization.

Congratulations to all our scholarship recipients!

The Florida State Department's Division of Cultural Affairs has awarded the Key West Literary Seminar a grant for more than $20,000. The award, part of the DCA's Culture Builds Florida Grant Program, is designated for the expansion and enhancement of the KWLS Audio Archives Project.

Begun in late 2007, the Audio Archives Project aims to preserve and promote the recorded history of the Key West Literary Seminar, which contain more than 20 years of unique presentations by some of the world's most influential writers. More than 50 such recordings have already been digitized and released through the project, which is freely available to anyone with an internet connection.

Together with matching funds from KWLS, the Florida Builds Culture grant marks a significant investment in the project and will ensure its viability for years to come. Funds will be used to digitize fragile analog recordings and develop a mobile-optimized platform that will allow iPhone and other mobile device users greater access to the archives. The award will support KWLS investment in audio production equipment, as well as the development of initiatives and partnerships aimed at increasing use of the archives among educators, students, and readers worldwide.

The Audio Archives Project is one of more than 100 project-specific grants awarded statewide by the Division in 2009. Granted projects demonstrate cultural excellence and innovation, sustainability, and effective program management in support of the Florida Council on Arts and Culture’s strategic plan for the continuing development of arts and culture in the State of Florida.

We are delighted to announce the theme for the 2011 Key West Literary Seminar. "The Hungry Muse: an exploration of food in literature" will bring together dozens of today's most compelling, thought-provoking, and funniest writers– memoirists, novelists, poets, historians, journalists, and all manner of lettered gastronome, gourmand, and epicure– to explore food and its place in contemporary literature. Confirmed speakers for the 29th annual event include humorists Calvin Trillin and Roy Blount, Jr., acclaimed memoirist and Gourmet editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl, novelists Bich Minh Nguyen and Diana Abu-Jaber, American Food Writing editor Molly O'Neill, and poet Kevin Young.

The subject of what we eat- and how and why we eat it- lies at the heart of good writing of all genres. When asked why she wrote about food, the incomparable M.F.K. Fisher answered, "It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and intertwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it ... and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied ... and it is all one."

With demand for this Seminar high, "The Hungry Muse" will encompass two independent Seminars, from January 6-9 and January 13-16, as well as a slate of writers' workshops January 10-13. Many more speakers, as well as writers' workshop faculty members, will be announced in the coming months. Registration is now open. Advance registration is strongly encouraged, as an early sell-out is likely.

photo by Nick Rosza Jane Hirshfield has been added to the roster of speakers for the sold-out Key West Literary Seminar this January. She will also offer an advanced writers' workshop, bringing the total number of workshops offered to seven.

Hirshfield's most recent book of poetry, After, was named a "best book of 2006" by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and England's Financial Times. She has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets.

The workshop, January 11-14, 2010, will be limited to 12 students and will include writing experiments, close-reading responses to poems, and conversation on craft. The goal, according to Hirshfield, is "to bring an open, intimate, and tenacious looking to words, worlds, and the craft-informed relationship between them where poetry begins," and to become aware of "the nameable elements of craft that underlie poetry's power to conjure, transform, delve, evoke, counter, move, unravel, expose, augment, and surprise."

From top left: Richard Wilbur, Natasha
Trethewey, James Tate, Mary Jo Salter, Mark
Strand, Kay Ryan, Timothy Steele, Robert
Pinsky, Maxine Kumin, Brad Leithauser, Paul
Muldoon, Harvey Shapiro, Yusef Komunyakaa,
Matthea Harvey, Rachel Hadas, Dan Gerber,
Rhina P. Espaillat, Rita Dove, Erica Dawson,
Kirby Congdon, and Billy Collins. A steady flow of registrations and a last-minute surge of extraordinarily talented applicants for the Scholarship Program has brought registration for the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar and Writers' Workshop Program to an official close. Those interested in attending may still sign up for the waiting list by sending an email to mail@kwls.org, and locals are reminded of the open-to-the-public session held on the Seminar's final Sunday.

The complete schedule for the 28th annual event– Clearing the Sill of the World, a celebration of 60 years of American poetry in honor of Richard Wilbur– is now available as a downloadable .pdf. Highlights of the January 7-10 program will include three-time U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky's keynote address, "Modernism and Memory"; a panel discussion on translation including Wilbur, Mark Strand, and Rachel Hadas; a production of Wilbur's translation of Jean Racine's "The Suitors" by the Red Barn Theatre; and a conversation including Matthea Harvey and James Tate on "Giving shape and form and voice to the madness and strangeness and wonder of everyday life." The event will also feature readings and lectures by current Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, and Pulitzer Prize winners Yusef Komunyakaa and Natasha Trethewey.

Photo by Don Getsug Studios Yusef Komunyakaa, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Warhorses, Copacetic, and I Apologize for the Eyes in my Head, will offer an advanced writers' workshop in Key West following the Seminar this January. The four-day poetry workshop, January 11-14, will focus on the process of revision. Time will be spent discussing poems written by members of the workshop, each of whom will be expected to submit a new poem daily. Submissions will be read, annotated, and discussed by all members of the workshop. "The basic philosophy underlining this creative writing workshop," says Komunyakaa, "is that we learn best about writing by writing, by listening to others constructively critique our work, and then by revising. The workshop is a small community of shared ideas– each poem is an action."

The Key West Literary Seminar offers three annual awards for emerging writers. Winners of the Joyce Horton Johnson, Marianne Russo, and Scotti Merrill prizes will receive full tuition to the Seminar and Writers' Workshop Program this January 7-14, as well as support for travel expenses to Key West and lodging and living expenses while here. Winners will also have an opportunity to appear on stage during the Seminar and present their work to an influential audience of writers, publishers, agents, and other literary professionals.

Awards are granted based on the excellence of a manuscript submission. Past winners include Kristen-Paige Madonia and Patricia Engel, who signed a two-book deal with Grove/Atlantic earlier this summer. Application details are online here. The deadline is September 30.

Todd Boss Poet Todd Boss, award-winning author of Yellowrocket and founder of the book marketing think-team Squad 365, has been named to the faculty for the 2010 Key West Literary Seminar Writers' Workshop Program. Boss's workshop, limited to eight students, will feature a series of highly focused mentorship-style conferences and group discussions. "You'll learn to listen to your poems with new ears, practice describing what it is you're actually doing in your best poems, and get ready to capitalize on your own best practices toward the making of brave new work that pushes you in new directions," says Boss. "The emphasis is on your voice, your talents, your subjects, your goals ... in short, you, and the particular ways in which you approach your poems."

Acceptance into the workshop, which is open to all skill and experience levels, is based upon a work sample and statement of goals. Click here for complete details, here for more writers' workshops with Billy Collins, E.J. Miller Laino, Valerie Martin, and Dara Wier.

Paul Muldoon photo by Peter Cook.
Matthea Harvey photo by Robert Casper. With the addition of The New Yorker poetry editor and Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon and Kingsley Tufts Award winner Matthea Harvey, the Key West Literary Seminar continues to buttress an already-impressive lineup for its 28th annual event in January 2010.

Muldoon is one of Ireland's leading contemporary poets. He is the author of more than 10 books of poems including Moy Sand and Gravel, which won the International Griffin Poetry Prize along with the Pulitzer, and his most recent work, Horse Latitudes, which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. From 1999-2004, Muldoon held the distinguished Professor of Poetry post at Oxford University, and he has also penned lyrics for rock bands including Warren Zevon, The Handsome Family, and Rackett, for whom Muldoon plays rhythm guitar. He succeeded Alice Quinn as poetry editor of the New Yorker in 2007.

In addition to the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, Harvey's third book, Modern Life, was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. A native of Germany, England, and Milwaukee, a graduate of Harvard and the University of Iowa, Harvey is also a contributing editor to jubilat, Meatpaper, and BOMB. The New York Times called her poems "The Future of Terror" and "Terror of the Future" "among the most arresting poems yet written about the current American political atmosphere."

In Key West January 7-10, Harvey and Muldoon will join several of the preeminent poets of our time, including Billy Collins, Yusef Komunyakaa, Kay Ryan, Robert Pinsky, Mark Strand, Rita Dove, and our guest of honor Richard Wilbur. Click here to learn more, and here to register.

David A. Kaufelt on Sugarloaf Key, ca. 1983.
Kaufelt's Literary Walking Tour, ca. 1986.
Photo by Jeffrey Cardenas.
Kaufelt at the Seminar in 1990 David A. Kaufelt, who capitalized on a successful career in New York as a novelist and executive to found the Key West Literary Seminar nearly 30 years ago, celebrates his 70th birthday today. His books include Six Months with an Older Woman (1973), later adapted for a made-for-tv movie starring John Ritter, American Tropic (1986), a historical-fiction account of the development of Florida, and the series of murder mysteries featuring lawyer-cum-detective Wyn Lewis, among them The Fat Boy Murders (1993).

Kaufelt arrived in Key West in the 1970s with his wife, the former Lynn Mitsuko Higashi, and launched the Seminar in 1983 from an office in the Kaufelts' Sugarloaf Key home. His guided literary walking tour of the island was a key component of the early Seminars, as popular for the intimate, street-level view it offered of the homes of Key West writers, as it was for Kaufelt's dapper enthusiasm and infectious charm. In a profile of the tour on National Public Radio, Kaufelt explained Key West's popularity among writers:

"I have a theory why we all live here- I call it the Peter Pan theory. Freud said that we are at our most creative when we are in our very early youth, before we're five years old. That's where we are here. We wear shorts, we ride bicycles, and we're surrounded by pirates- they're cocaine pirates, but they're still pirates- we have the water, a great symbol of the unconscious, and we're free to be children here and let our spirits go. There's nobody in suits and ties telling us what we have to do or making us feel guilty."

In shorts, and on bicycles, we say thank you, David, and Happy Birthday!

Timothy Steele photo by Barian.
Erica Dawson by Joy Dawson. Timothy Steele and Erica Dawson have joined the roster for the 28th Key West Literary Seminar, to be held at the San Carlos Institute this January 7-10. They join nearly 20 other poets, including U.S. Poets Laureate Billy Collins, Kay Ryan, Rita Dove, Robert Pinsky, Mark Strand, Maxine Kumin, and our guest of honor Richard Wilbur, for "Clearing the Sill of the World."

Steele (top left) is the author of four collections of poetry, including most recently Toward the Winter Solstice (2006). His debut collection, Uncertainties and Rest (1979), was called "desperately and delightfully unfashionable," in The Hudson Review, a nod to his work's allegiance to meter and rhyme at a time when free verse was the ascendant style. Steele has also written on poetic form in two scholarly works, including Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt against Meter, from which comes the excellent and thought-provoking essay Prosody for 21st-Century Poets.

Dawson (bottom left) is among a newer wave of poets working in traditional forms, and credits Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, and James Merrill as influences on her work. Her debut collection, Big-Eyed Afraid, won the 2006 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and was chosen by Contemporary Poetry Review as its Best Debut Volume for 2007. X.J. Kennedy has called her "the most exciting younger poet I've seen in years."

The website has a complete list of speakers for KWLS 28, with individual pages containing biographical material and links to multimedia resources online. Registration is still open, but seats are going fast.

Photo by Jerry Bauer Critically acclaimed novelist Valerie Martin will return to Key West to teach a four-day advanced fiction writers' workshop this January 11-14. Martin is the author of nine novels, including Mary Reilly, the Orange Prize-winning Property, and her newest work, The Confessions of Edward Day, which a reviewer in The New York Times Book Review last month called "Hitchcockian in its trenchant and perverse knowledge about the human animal." Martin is also the author of three collections of short fiction and a biography of St. Francis of Assisi, titled Salvation. Her awards include a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Kafka Prize.

Participants in Martin's advanced fiction workshop will work on the critique and revision of a work-in-progress to bring it to a more complete and polished form. There are no limitations as to genre or subject matter, however a writing sample is required to determine acceptance. To learn more about Martin's workshop click here; other workshops, with Billy Collins, Dara Wier, and E.J. Miller-Laino, can be found here.

Listen to Martin's reading from Property at KWLS 27 in our audio archives.