CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP W/ Lorna Dee Cervantes at MALCS Conference, UCSB, July 18-20!

CFP: MALCS Creative Writing Workshop – ECOPOETICS: The Creative/Critical Response

June 6th, 2012 CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social calls for participation in the Creative Writing Workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes at the 2012 MALCS Summer Institute at University of California, Santa Barbara, July 18-21, 2012.
DEADLINE: Postmark June 15, 2012

WHAT: Creative Writing from inception to publication with former professor and Director of Creative Writing, Lorna Dee Cervantes!

ECOPOETICS: The Creative/Critical Response is a Xicana creative writing workshop designed to be open to all levels, from no experience to very experienced. Writers of all genres and persuasions are invited to attend as what we will cover may apply to all types of writing. Learn how to go from no poems to a full-length manuscript in two days. Bilingual (Spanish) writers welcome. Please bring copies of one poem or short prose piece for workshopping with the group along with whatever we generate in class. Besides workshopping we may even find time to do a bit of works hopping.

This intensive workshop will be divided into four distinct phases of the creative/critical process: GENERATION, SELECTION, Re-VISION, and CRITICAL EVALUATION. We will participate in exercises designed to match each phase of the process We should come away with at least 5 new poems and a sense of our own patterns and patterning, a new toolbox of techniques and methods, a new confidence and playfulness, a new sense of our own strengths and weaknesses as writers, and maybe even become acquainted with our own inner critic as well as become accustomed to the sound of our voice as well as our own individual "Voice" as "Scribe." We'll also cover the nuts and bolts of "Po'Biz" such as how to prepare and edit a manuscript for submission, how to find publishers, how to maintain the inspiration (breath) for sustaining a work or book over time. How to perform our work in "Real Time". How and when to detach ourselves from our work and voice. How to criticize another writer's work. How to discover and foster a community of feminist writers — maybe even how to support, start and develop our own publishing resources and performance venues.

This workshop respects all and expects such from participants. Expect diversity. Expect to learn how to pleasure yourself - so to speak. Expect work.

This Creative Writing Workshop follows the spirit and mission of MALCS; its expressed purpose is to identify and develop creative writers for publication in Chicana/Latina Studies. Participants bring their work-in-progress and read and comment on the material of the other writers before and during the workshop within the context of Chicana/Latina feminist values: humility, collaboration, community involvement and justice. Attending both two-hour sessions (the first on Weds. July 18, and the second on Friday July 20) is required.

(Lorna Dee Cervantes will also be available for private manuscript consultation. Send hardcopy of manuscript.)

One Creative Writing Workshop will be offered this summer:
1) ECOPOETICS: The Creative/Critical Response, A Creative Writing Workshop, facilitated by Lorna Dee Cervantes, former editor/publisher of MANGO & RED DIRT, former Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at CU Boulder.

WHEN: July 18 at 4:00-6:00 p.m. and July 20 at 8:00-10:00 a.m.
Participants may arrive on Tuesday, July 18, but must contact the Site Committee to arrange housing.

WHY: A rare opportunity to study with an award-winning and critically acclaimed Xicana poet, Lorna Dee Cervantes: publisher (Sandra Cisneros, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Alberto Rios, Victor Martinez, Sherman Alexie, Ray Gonzalez, Jose Antonio Burciaga, Luis Omar Salinas, ronnie burk, ...) and professor (Luis Alberto Urrea, Haas Mroue, Alan Gilbert, Simone Muench, Kristin Prevallet, Michael Robbins, Cody Todd, ....) with over 35 years of experience.

WHO: We encourage applications from writers at all levels, including tenured or mid-career professors.

HOW MANY: The workshop has space for 12 participants, who must register for the Summer Institute and be current MALCS members.

FINE PRINT: Acknowledge the labor of others.

HOW TO APPLY: ECOPOETICS: The Creative/Critical Response, A Creative Writing Workshop

DEADLINE: Postmark June 15, 2012.

WHERE: Postal mail documents to

Lorna Dee Cervantes
3181 Mission Street, PMB 16
San Francisco, CA 94110

WHAT TO SEND: Please submit a cover letter describing your experience as a writer, your contact information, and no more than 10 pages of creative writing, typed and double-spaced. Please identify all work-in-progress or published pieces. (Books welcome!)

Also send via email.

 EMAIL: Send the same materials in PDF to (LornaDeeCervantes) at (me) to the usual commercial suffix by June 15, 2012.

To register for the MALCS (Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social) Summer Institute 2012 "Todos Somos Arizona: Confronting the Attack On Difference" at UC Santa Barbara, July 18-21, go to www.malcs.org; early registration by June 15, 2012.