Friends, I hope to see you at one or more of these excellent local writing conferences this spring. They are all very modestly priced, and the quality is high. Check ’em out! Happy reading and writing! ~Kate
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2012 SPC Spring Writers Conference
Saturday April 14 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
1719 25th Street
Sacramento, CA
http://www.
$30 Non-members, $20 Members
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Saturday, April 28, 2012
8:30 am to 4:30 pm
Cosumnes River College
8401 Center Parkway, Sacramento, CA
http://www.hart-crcwritersconference.org/index.html
Conference Fee – $35.00 (Includes lunch, workshops, and materials)
Registration Deadline: April 22, 2012. Space is limited.
In celebration of the 5th anniversary of Our Life Stories, join us for a special feature of this year’s event:
Pre-conference Reading & Reception, Friday, April 27, 7 pm to 8:30 pm, Hart Senior Center, 915 27th Street, Sacramento, CA
Hear a selection of conference faculty reading from their own works, and enjoy refreshments and conversation with other conference participants.
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AMERICAN RIVER COLLEGE PRESENTS SummerWords: The American River College Creative Writing Colloquium, May 31 – June 3, 2012 ~ Keynote Phillip Levine, U.S. Poet Laureate
Join fellow members of our local writing community and beyond at this exciting weekend of workshops, panel discussions and readings! Cost is $85 (includes Phillip Levine reading, plus special Q&A for colloquium participants only).
http://www.arc.losrios.edu/Programs_of_Study/English/SummerWords_ARC_Writing_Colloquium.htm
Keynote Speaker
Philip Levine
U.S. Poet Laureate
Philip Levine is the eighteenth United States Poet Laureate for 2011-2012. Upon his appointment, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said in a statement, “Philip Levine is one of America’s great narrative poets. His plainspoken lyricism has, for half a century, championed the art of telling ‘The Simple Truth’….”
Levine “is a large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland,” who, according to Edward Hirsch in the New York Times Book Review, should be considered “one of [America’s] … quintessentially urban poets.” He was born in 1928 to Russian-Jewish immigrants, in Detroit, a city that inspired much of his writing. Author of 20 collections of poetry, his most recent is News Of The World (Knopf, 2009). The Simple Truth won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995. What Work Is won the National Book Award in 1991. David Baker writes, “What Work Is may be one of the most important books of poetry of our time. Poem after poem confronts the terribly damaged conditions of American labor, whose circumstance has perhaps never been more wrecked.”
Levine is known as the poet of the working class, and he remains dedicated to writing poetry “for people for whom there is no poetry.” Dwight Garner of The New York Times comments, “One of the joys of following Mr. Levine’s career has been watching how playful he can be, despite the moral seriousness of his unadorned and lightly accented verse.”
As well as having received two National Book Awards, Levine is also the recipient of the National Book Critics Award and the Ruth Lily prize. He divides his time between Brooklyn, NY, and Fresno, CA.
