Join Robert Coover, Francine Prose, Mary Di Michele, Montreal’s Vittorio Rossi for Creative Writing at our Summer Literary Seminars ITALY for two weeks starting 15 May 2009 in VASTO, on the Adriatic Coast of Abruzzo, 3 hrs from Rome & Naples, 45 minutes from Pescara Airport.
Behind SLS lies an exciting concept in literary seminars. Whereas in conventional writing retreats, writers isolate themselves from the world to find inspiration, SLS is built on the premise that one’s writing can and does often benefit considerably from the keen sense of displacement created by an immersion in a thoroughly foreign culture and street vernacular; that one’s removing oneself from the routine context of one’s life tends to provide for a strong creative jolt, and offer a wholly new perspective on one’s writing.
The seminars engage the participants in workshops in fiction, poetry, non-fiction, playwriting, translation, travel writing, lectures and readings with leading writers from around the world, as well as include exploratory excursions of the surrounding areas.
Workshops are being held:
Nairobi and Lamu Island, Kenya, Dec. 13-28, 2008
Vasto, Abruzzo, Italy, May 15-30, 2009
St. Petersburg, Russia , June 2009 - dates TBA
Lithuania, July 2009 – dates TBA
SLS Italy is the newest addition to the roster of programs, representing the broadening of the scope of SLS offerings, further implementing the idea of establishing a series of SLS programs in different parts of the world. These programs will all be premised on the belief of the commonality of writerly experience, thereby creating a larger and single literary space - to discover Italy, not as a tourist in a packaged tour, nor as a foreigner in a sea of other foreigners, but as a writer in a community of other writers immersed in literature, good food, wine, sun and sea in an idyllic corner of the Adriatic, Vasto, Abruzzo, a three-hour drive from Rome and Naples, or forty-five minutes south of Pescara Airport.
A similar program in Lithuania is in the works for July, 2009. Other programs are being considered beyond 2009.
SLS is affiliated with Montreal’s Concordia University, the venerable Herzen University in St. Petersburg, and, in Kenya, with the remarkable dynamic and innovative Kwani? Literary Trust & Journal.
Registrations are now being taken for Kenya and Italy: visit www.sumlitsem.org where three very different and distinctive worlds await you to discover and make your own.
He was such a nice little boy. Always polite. Soft-spoken. Honest. Used to write stories to his teachers he invariably fell in love with. Teachers being the signposts to books, language, history. What happened? How did he become….what he’s become?
From classical rock to classical arias to Neapolitan, Broadway hits to folk & blues, Lou also represents the musicians below. If you have a live venue, pub, club, record label, booking agency, please visit the artists roster below. If you love what they do, let us know.
Buon ascolto!
Acoustic Folk & Blues Dago Red: www.dagored.it
Classic Rock by The Lies, five 18/20-year olds who write, perform and rock like old vets:
www.myspace.com/liesrock
Classical Music & Traditional Naeopolitan/Italian Brass PAN: www.myspace.com/panfilomascitelli
Arias, Broadway Hits, Old & New Italian Songs La Banda del Buco: www.myspace.com/labandadelbuco
“A really good band…Dago Red…one of the best I’ve heard in a long, long time.”
Frank Hennessy, on BBC Radio Wales’ Celtic Heartbeat, Sept 2, 2008.
Yup, I’m managing DAGO RED, an acoustic blues & roots band from Italy, and they just got some airplay on www.bbc.co.uk/radiowales. We’re also set to tour Canada/US in Fall 2008.
If you’d like some blues with a little sunshine…let me know: info@luigimonteferrante.com
SPONSORS WELCOME!
For more tracks & info on the band, please visit: www.sonic.bids.com/dagored.
Life During Wartime narrates the story of Seymour Snowe, an ideologue for the Ministry of the Interior, and his twin brother, the President of the breakaway province of Quelquebeck.
Dispatched to New York, Snowe is to promote the works of his native Paddock-speaking intelligentsia; at the same time, he is creating axioms whereby the Queenglish-speaking populace still residing in Quelequebeck are being repressed through Joy Divisions – symbolically, arts retreats – meant to house – and isolate – them from the “native” Paddocks.
As Snowe reduces the Queenglish lexicon to that of everyman, he discovers the richness and variety of the unspoken word: visual arts, and the expanding powers of the imagination. At this point, he seeks his own freedom, and seeks exile – a defector.
The story is narrated by Caius Bloomfield, his translator, who in turn has a parallel story to tell: he is a recent widower coping with his unacknowledged suffering and his struggle to keep the household together: his two teenage children, a girl who is imploding and his joyously outrageous son.
Throughout his narrative, set in NYC and the suburbs, he is confronted by rage, intolerance, outlandish views of people he meets on the street, or as he commutes; they also explore various galleries and museums, this while Snowe elucidates his views, views which are translated into the Brown Book.
Bloomfield, aware of his own complicity, aims for redemption by rising within the Party’s echelons so as to strike at its heart.
What we desire strengthens the enemy; what weakens us the enemy seeks; to achieve
enduring peace & prosperity, we must rid ourselves of what they seek, what they desire.
Chairman Ti Pao Zhing
On Disarmament and De-Industrialization in
Questions of New Economic Policy at the Open
Session of the Sixteenth Plenary of the Paddock
Labor Party of the People’s Republic of Quelquebeck
A coup, a coup, a kingdom for a coup.
St Bruno, President of Quelquebeck, to Dr C. Bloomfield
Recorded telephone conversation
Archives of Ministry of Interior
Seem:
Once in, Rise;
The Higher, the closer:
Strike.
Caius Bloomfield to his daughter Helen in a letter
Archives of Ministry of Interior
All the world’s a beauty contest
And I am scarred
Sadness has lashed my body
With burns
Helen Bloomfield to her mother
Archives of Ministry of the Interior
QUELQUEBECK & THE INDEX
In collusion with BOSS, or the Bureau of Strategic Studies, the Ministry of the Interior’s most urgent project was the Index. With an impetuous stroke, centuries of sham Queenglish metaphysics rejected, pseudo-science brushed into dustbins, artifice swept into the kitchen sink. The sewage of the erudite – regicide, pragmatism, eschatologist, plausible deniability, empiricism, parallel convergence - would be expurgated from Paddock libraries, Queenglish tomes dispensed to the Archives, in truth, incinerators. Purple prose would be whitewashed, as would mala affectatio, genus turpe, rhetorical devices employed to befuddle the working class who fancy amusement, not bemusement by ludicrous quandaries. All this dictated interminable scrutiny, diligence and boldness.
“Foul censorship,” howled a chorus of Queenglish sympathizers - self-exiled, self-
imploding hate-mongers, agitators, traitors, terrorists, arsonists, rapists and scoundrels posing as avant-garde performers in, indubitably, the most retrograde ethically slack self-abusive émigré enclave on this side of the Solar System: Nouveau York.
BOSS countered with:
The Index prescribes countermeasures to the ascendancy of dross.
A recent oeuvre struck from Index: Cruise Missile Baby
Let us add a comma, in movable type, and ignore the implications: Cruise, Missile Baby
Cruise Missile, Baby
In any event, since its suppression, Ti Pao Zhing – l’auteur - has twice attempted
suicide - unsuccessfully. May BOSS grant his wish.
Zhing was the philosopher most cited by Quelquebeck’s Paddock-speaking Premier, Bruno St Bruno. Zhing’s postulates, heretofore known as the Brown Book, an opus-perpetually-in-progress, was abridged and published as Shades of Brown.
Shades of Brown became required reading for anyone interested in understanding the nation’s DEF, or Demographic Engineering Facilities; for everyone else, it became compulsory by decree. Let us turn a page at random. The letter E.
Efficiency has served the System well. Efficiency has subjugated customs, traditions,
peoples, labor unions, ministries. Countless cruelties have been perpetrated by the High
Priests of Efficiency. We, too, shall turn to Efficiency and preach its commandments,
regulate our own territories as we deem suitable to our needs and requirements in the
Almighty Name of Efficiency.
In the consequent carnage of collective zeal, Ti Pao Zhing, and his personal secretary,
Seymour Snowe, was implicated and very much accountable for.
FROM ITALY’S BEST-KEPT SECRET TO A HAVEN FOR ARTISTS AND WRITERS
Luigi Monteferrante’s retreats help creative spirits relax, recharge, and enjoy the view
The first time I visited Abruzzi, I fell in love. Everywhere I went, I found something to make me smile. Lovely towns with charming houses. Silvery-green olive groves. Beautiful beaches. Rugged mountains topped with snow. Hospitable people who couldn’t do enough for you. Wine as good as any I’d ever tasted. And the kind of rich, hearty food you’d have to stand in line for back in Philly. There was no question about it: this region, situated on Italy’s Adriatic coast, would be my little secret. Unlike Tuscany, Abruzzi had not been popularized by mass-marketed books or Merchant-Ivory films. Unlike Umbria or Le Marche, it remained relatively undiscovered by those who thought they knew all the undiscovered places. Few people I knew had ever heard of Abruzzi, much less had any interest in renting a villa there. It belonged to me.
So I had mixed feelings when I was invited to hear writer Luigi Monteferrante speak at the DaVinci Art Alliance a few weeks ago. Monteferrante, a Canadian native now living in the picturesque Abruzzese town of Vasto, runs a unique service: workshop retreats that give other writers and visual artists the chance to soak up the scenery and recharge their creative batteries. Here he was in South Philadelphia, spilling my secret to everyone. How could he? Then I met him, heard what he had to say, and then I thought, how could he not? Abruzzi is fabulous, and his retreats are too wonderful not to share.
Monteferrante’s unique get-aways which he runs with Philadelphia-area artist Rachel Citrino provide tours, studio space, and as much or as little structure and interaction as each guest might require or desire. It all started when Monteferrante was a child. Growing up in Montreal, he vacationed with his family in Italy. It became a second home, and after graduating from college, he decided to make it his first. In between teaching English to corporate clients and wind-surfing, he wrote, married an Italian woman, and decided to stay. That was twenty-two years ago. The environment proved to be an ideal incubator for his own writing (he has published stories in the Chicago Quarterly Review as well as a novel, At the Heart of the Devil’s Lair), and now he wants others to bask in this source of inspiration. This is not the typical touristy tour; it is, in Monteferrante’s words, “A chance for me to show people the Italy I know.” And he knows it well.
Held twice each year, the retreats consist of up to ten participants, who rendezvous in Rome for a three-day introductory period. From there, they see an Italy that’s not on the usual tourist routes. A bus takes them to the little village of Fontecchio, where they’ll view the imposing castle and the lovely Romanesque church of San Francesco. Then it’s off to the medieval town of Vasto for the next eight days. While on Monteferrante’s home turf, guests have lots of inviting options; Monteferrante and Citrino tailor the activities to the wishes of their guests, and Citrino even distributes a questionnaire to determine their preferences. You might wish to relax on the pristine beaches. You can visit the picturesque historic town, with its distinctive architecture. Or you might chose to spend the morning cycling, and the afternoon exploring the resources of the Rossetti House (the home of Gabriel Rossetti, father of the famous Dante Gabriel), now an archive. You might also hop on the minibus for a visit to a vineyard, a trip to the Trimiti Islands, or a jaunt to Venice for the Biennale.
And while play is strongly encouraged, there are plenty of opportunities for work, too. Artists can attend Rachel Citrino’s workshops on drawing, painting or photography, or work privately in one of the spacious studios. Writers can enough find peace and quiet to crank out that book or polish that screenplay. And this is Italy, of course, so in between, there are wine tastings, wonderful dinners, and lots of pleasant surprises. At the end of the stay, all artists are welcome to display their finished pieces or their works-in-progress at a special exhibition and reception. (Last year’s drew some nearly 60 visitors!)
The 2007 retreats will be held May 28 through June 10, and from June 18 through July 1. The price is $2,850 per person, including the accommodations, transportation to and from Rome, all breakfasts, most other meals, and tour guides. The optional excursion to Venice (June 10-13) is an additional $495.
With the gregarious and gracious Monteferrante and Citrino leading the way, it’s hard to imagine that my private Abruzzi will remain a secret much longer. The books and movies are sure to follow, and so are the tourists. But it’s also likely that the visiting artists and writers will also fill the world with works of true beauty inspired by their travels to this magnificent region. And that’s not such a bad thing.
For more information, visit www.vm-plus.com or www.villamonteferrante.com. E-mail Luigi Monteferrante at info@luigimonteferrante.com. For information about future Da Vinci Art Alliance events, visit www.davinciartalliance.org.
Arts Workshop with Italian-American Artist
RACHEL CITRINO
Spring/Summer 2008
Rome & Abruzzo
Inclusive of accommodations with breakfast, some meals, ground transport, studio, entrance fees, English speaking guides, excursions…and a closing exhibition open to the public where you can share your work and your ideas.
Optional:
VENICE BIENNALE
3 Days in June 2008
Add cost 495 USD
