The Next Hopkins Conference on Craft Arrives in 2009!
After two successful summers in Florence, Italy, the Hopkins Conference on Craft is preparing new concepts and opportunities for the summer of 2009. While we likely will return to Italy, we also are considering other locations because of the university’s recent sale of its Villa Spelman in Florence. Here’s what you can expect for 2009:
- Full course credit for students in the M.A. in Writing Program at Hopkins
- Special discounts for Hopkins alumni and other outside participants
- Graduate credit options for non-student attendees
- Nationally prominent workshop leaders in fiction, poetry, nonfiction
- Enriching locations in the world’s great cities
- Craft exercises that exploit the heritage of our locations
- Receptions, excellent food & drink, student & faculty readings
- Tours & other events for participants, families, & guests
Our plans for 2009 mean we will take a one-year hiatus in 2008, to consider other locations in Italy, Europe, and the United States. This hiatus also allows air fares, oil prices, and the U.S. Dollar to stabilize. Meanwhile, we will consider previously announced plans for a conference that alternates between U.S. and foreign locations, including Hopkins facilities in Nanjing, China, and Bologna, Italy, as well as other sites in Florence, Rome, Venice, Paris, the Loire Valley, London/U.K., Scotland, and Ireland. In the U.S., we are considering mountain locations in the Shenandoahs, Appalachians, and Rockies, plus coastal locations. For more information or to be put on the information lists for the conference, please email: craftconference@jhu.edu. We’ll see you in 2009!
A Glance at Our Previous Workshop Leaders:
National Book Award winner Alice McDermott, the Richard A. Macksey Professor at The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, is the author of six novels. Her latest, After This, was read in excerpt at the 2006 Hopkins Conference on Craft just before publication. Her fourth novel, Charming Billy, was a New York Times bestseller and received the 1998 National Book Award for fiction. Two previous novels were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. McDermott was a principal fiction workshop leader in 2006 and 2007 at our Florence conferences.
Dave Smith, the Elliot Coleman Professor of Poetry and Department Chair at The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, was the principal poetry workshop leader in Florence in 2007. One of the nation's best known poets and poetry editors, Smith is the author of Little Boats, Unsalvaged, his 14th collection of poetry, plus The Wick of Memory, New and Selected Poems, 1970-2000, and Onliness, a novel. Smith has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in Poetry, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lyndhurst Fellowship as well as the Virginia Prize in Poetry and an Award in Poetry from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
Robert Wilson, an author, essayist, critic, and one of the nation's premier literary editors, led the 2007 workshop in nonfiction and science-medical writing. Currently editor of The American Scholar, Wilson edited Preservation magazine from 1996-2002 and won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence. Wilson was literary editor of the famous Civilization magazine when it also won the General Excellence award. The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax, his biography of the famous Old West scientist and explorer Clarence King, was published in 2006.
Jean McGarry, professor of fiction and former chair of The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, was a principal fiction workshop leader in Florence in 2006. McGarry is the author of four collections of short fiction, Airs of Providence, The Very Rich Hours, Home At Last, and Dream Date, and three novels. She won the Southern Review / L.S.U. Short Fiction Prize. Her stories have appeared in Yale Review, Southern Review, Southwest Review, The New Yorker, and other journals. Her novel, A Bad and Stupid Girl, was winner of the 2006 University of Michigan Fiction Prize.
Mary Jo Salter, an acclaimed poet and poetry editor and a professor of poetry at The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, was a principal poetry workshop leaders in Florence in 2006. Her of five collections of poems include Henry Purcell in Japan, Unfinished Painting, Sunday Skaters, A Kiss in Space, and Open Shutters, a (2003 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She authored a children’s book, The Moon Comes Home, and her first play, Falling Bodies, premiered in 2004. Salter is a coeditor of The Norton Anthology of Poetry and a lyricist who has worked with composers Allen Bonde and Fred Hersch. She has been vice president of the Poetry Society of America since 1995.
Brad Leithauser, novelist, poet, essayist, and professor at The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, was a principal fiction workshop leader in Florence in 2006. His most recent novel is Darlington's Fall: A Novel in Verse. His previous novels include The Friends of Freeland (1997), Seaward (1993), Hence (1989) and Equal Distance (1985.) His latest book of poetry is Lettered Creatures. In addition to three other poetry collections, Leithauser has written a collection of essays, Penchants and Places, and served as editor of The Norton Book of Ghost Stories. He has received many awards, including the MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships. He was Time magazine's theater critic for a year.
John T. Irwin, the Decker Professor in the Humanities at Johns Hopkins, is the chair of the Hopkins Conference on Craft and was a principal poetry workshop leader in Florence in 2006. Irwin is the author of three books of criticism and the poetry books The Heisenberg Variations and Just Let Me Say This About That. Former editor of The Georgia Review and current editor of The Johns Hopkins Press Fiction and Poetry Series, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1991 and the Christian Gauss Prize and the Scaglione Prize in 1994 for his criticism. Former chair of The Writing Seminars and current chair of the Master of Arts in Writing Program, Irwin published his latest narrative poem, As Long As It's Big, in 2005 - the same year he was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Pulitzer-Prize winner Wayne Biddle, a Visiting Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins, was principal workshop leader in nonfiction in Florence in 2006. Biddle is the author of four books of nonfiction: Coming to Terms, Barons of the Sky, A Field Guide to Germs, and A Field Guide to the Invisible. His articles and essays have appeared in many magazines, including Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, and Science. His reporting for the New York Times shared the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism. He earned an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship in 1989.
David Everett (conference director) is the academic director and Senior Associate Program Chair of the Master of Arts in Writing Program at Johns Hopkins. His many journalism and writing awards include the highest honor for Washington Correspondence from the Society of Professional Journalists and honors from the University of Missouri, the Associated Press, the National Press Club, and the Overseas Press Club. He is contributor to three nonfiction books, including A Field Guide for Science Writers. He was a principal nonfiction workshop leader in 2006 and, with Ed Perlman, led the afternoon craft exercises and seminars in 2007.
Ed Perlman, a poetry instructor and faculty advisor in poetry in the Master of Arts in Writing Program at Johns Hopkins, led the afternoon craft exercises and seminars in 2007 with David Everett. Perlman has taught high school English and humanities and was principal for the European campus of a summer school program. In 1977, he left full-time teaching to become a design and construction consultant, first for his own private firm, then for the Murdock Development Co., Baltimore and Los Angeles. He became vice president at Murdock, responsible for architecture, design, construction coordination and marketing for many projects. He also specialized in historic preservation. He resumed teaching in 1995 and soon joined the M.A. Program’s faculty His poetry, essays, and book reviews have appeared in various reviews and publications.
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