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Sirenland Writers Conference Blog
When I realized that the time had rolled around for writers to apply to the Sirenland 2010 Conference, I felt a little bereft - it's not the lot of the Fellow to return - and also felt a desire to encourage everyone for whom it seems like it might be possible to go, to apply, because of the unique quality of the work that happens there.
I'll admit that when I learned last January that I had been selected as the 2009 Fellow, my initial focus was on the trip-to-Italy-week-in-a-super-deluxe-hotel-in-Positano aspect of the award. When you're used to gatherings of writers that include unnervingly suspect sheets slipping off plastic mattresses and meals that require a certain transcendent attitude just to ingest them, it's a little tough not to see the promise of five-star luxuries as the defining feature of Sirenland. It's true that during my initial phone call with Dani Shapiro, she said impressive things about the focus being on the work and about the care that goes into the selection of both participants and faculty, but have you SEEN the website for the hotel Le Sirenuse?
I'm not going to lie. It's even more gorgeous in person. Fantasize about a lovely setting, now double the beauty, triple the hospitality, add exquisite food, have a few drinks if that's your pleasure and you begin to have a sense of the physical delights. But it's by no means only the surroundings that set this conference apart or, ultimately, that give it the quality it has.
As the Fellow, I was in Dani's workshop and I can honestly say that it was among the very few finest workshops in which I've ever participated. The diverse nature of the works presented was such that not only did each participant receive excellent readings of his or her own piece, but the week as a whole became a kind of mini-course on structure - in the contexts of both fiction and memoir. There was none of the all too common workshop bloodletting that goes on, but for anyone who assumes that a cushy surrounding comes with cushy critiques as well, not a chance. The questions asked and suggestions offered were serious and incisive while also being consistently grounded in the apparent intent of the author. And I heard much the same from the participants in the workshops led by Jim Shepard and Peter Cameron - with an important assist for all three from Hannah Tinti.
One of my favorite things about the conference was the way in which the conversation through the week, over meals, over drinks, in odd corners of the hotel, became less and less about how lovely the view, how delicious the food, and more and more the odd, awkward sort one often sees among writers. One person is talking about their plans for revision, the other is frowning, half lsitening, half realizing she ought to add another scene to her story. And then often, at some point, both realize that there's a way in which their individual musings relate, that by discussing the revision, the added scene, together, they can help one another. Day by day, you could hear the work taking up more and more space in everyone's thoughts, see a hotel full of guests become a community of writers.
There are more things to praise - the readings, the individual meetings, the presentations on publishing and screenwriting, the parties, the parties, the parties - but my main point here is just that while you're poring over the website for Le Sirenuse, admiring the exquisite marble bathrooms and candlelit dining room, keep in mind that if you're lucky enough to attend, at some point, all that elegance and all that beauty will magically become wonderful, welcome side-benefits of a conference that itself, most of all, will benefit your work.
robin black
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