This is happening online next week! All free! 🙂 Workshops in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Readings in the evenings! I’m teaching a generative workshop on Hermit Crab Lyric Essays on Wednesday morning, July 1, and I’m giving a reading on Friday July 3 at 7 pm. It’s all free and organized through the Oak Bluffs Public Library on Martha’s Vineyard. Tune in and join us!
The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, where I’ve taught seven of the last ten years, has begun sharing writing exercises as part of their new online content. The Institute won’t be happening in person this summer, for obvious reasons, but anyone can now enjoy free weekly writing prompts from the faculty. Today they’ve posted an exercise I created.
It’s a prompt to guide you in writing a lyric essay, specifically one of the fragmented/collage type lyric essays which I love so much. Happy writing!
To get the writing exercise, click HERE!
Thank you so much to all the great folks who came out to my class on the hermit crab essay and my poetry reading yesterday at the Oak Bluffs Library on Martha’s Vineyard! It was such a treat!  Thank you to Carolina and Marco for hosting me at the library. Thank you to Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing for bringing me to the island as part of the year-long visiting writers series!
I’m delighted to announce that I’m returning to Martha’s Vineyard at the end of this month! I’ll be teaching a 2-hour writing class on the Hermit Crab Essay and then giving a poetry reading at the Oak Bluffs Public Library on Feb 29. It’s all completely free and open to the public. Dag! This event is part of the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing’s Year-Round Writers Series. I did it last year, too, and we had a great time. If you’re in the area, please come on by!
More info HERE.
Thank you to Mark Montgomery and Richard Bower for inviting me to be this fall’s Visiting Writer at Cayuga College, a tradition going back more than 30 years and including the likes of writers like George Saunders and Robert Bly. I had a blast reading my poems for the students, responding to their thoughtful questions, sharing a craft essay, talking about publishing, and doing some writing together. Such a full and inspiring experience. Thank you most of all to the students of Cayuga Community College, at both the Auburn and the Fulton Campuses. Your smiles and generosity warmed my way through this early winter deep freeze!
I’m excited to announce that I’ll be teaching an 8-week poetry writing workshop called “Place and Poetic Practice” starting October 2, 2019 at The Downtown Writer’s Center in sunny Syracuse, NY.
Place and Poetic Practice with Christopher Citro. Wednesdays, 6:00-8:00. 8 weeks, starting October 2. In this workshop we’ll discuss poetry that incorporates a sense of place to enchant and challenge the reader. We’ll use prompts and exercises drawn from our readings to inspire new writing. Required text: The Poem’s Country: Place & Poetic Practice, edited by Shara Lessley and Bruce Snider (Pleiades Press, 2018).
Registration is inexpensive and open to the public. To learn more about The Downtown Writer’s Center, download the winter class schedule, and register for this workshop, visit the Center’s website HERE. Feel free to share with anyone who might be interested!
What an awesome, regenerative, inspiring week of talking about poems and creating new poems with these extraordinary writers, the members of my Generative Poetry Workshop at the Kettle Pond Writers’ Conference in Paul Smith’s College. Thank you thank you thank you everyone!
What a wonderful opening evening at the Kettle Pond Writers’ Conference last night here in Paul Smith’s College in the Adirondacks. It was such a joy to share the reading stage with fiction writer extraordinaire Brock Clarke! This is going to be a great week of teaching writing in the mountains, surrounded by the tall pines, and the geese, and the loons and…maybe…mooses?
What an amazing week at the tenth anniversary of The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing with my fellow faculty. You are all inspiring, delightful, sweet people and I’m honored to know you all.
What a fantastic week with the attendees of the 10th anniversary of The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing! Thank you everyone for all the amazements, the conversations, the inspirations! It’s sad to say goodbye.