Writer in West marin

We are in a crisis of literacy.  The National Endowment of the Arts reports that 15 – 24 year olds spend seven minutes a day on voluntary reading. The Writer in West Marin Program (WIWM) was conceived as one way to deal with this crisis and as one community’s commitment to giving its students and residents the opportunity to explore the wider world through the practice and honing of the written word. 

West Marin was the site last March of one of the most successful and influential literary gatherings ever held in Northern California  -“The Geography of Hope” conference, celebrating the life and work of Wallace Stegner.  Stegner, a noted teacher of writers, said “Writing is not a function of intelligence or application.  It is a function of gift.  All any teacher can do is work with what is given.”  WIWM was created in the belief that such gifts should be nurtured, and brought to fruition in the spirit of cooperative community action.  The proceeds of the annual “Geography of Hope” conference will fund WIWM.
 
We are soliciting applications from Northern California writers for a residency of five weeks beginning March 20, 2009, during which the writer will conduct, in the spirit of Stegner, creative and environmental writing classes and workshops for students of West Marin.  We will provide room and board at Mesa Refuge, a writers’ retreat in Point Reyes Station that has hosted such writers as Michael Pollan and Terry Tempest Williams.  Additionally, a stipend of $3,000 will be given, as well as time to contemplate or actively write.  At the end of the program, there will be a student reading and a WIWM Anthology, which we hope will be the first of many.

The ideal candidate is a published writer who has some experience teaching middle and high school age children.  We are looking for someone who can bring to the classroom a passion for literature and inspire in our children and community an active exploration of language and the written word. “We believe that the conversation generated by practitioners and novices will yield enormous rewards, knowing that being touched by an authentic being opens us up an helps us inhabit larger rather than small minds, open rather than closed ones”.

We encourage applications from both emerging and established writers, but prefer candidates who have produced a consistently strong body of work. 

For an application and more information, please visit www.ptreyesbooks.com
Or email tomalesbaylibraryassociation@gmail.com , or call (415) 663-9480

 

Writer in West Marin Application

Available for download here or contact tomalesbaylibraryassociation@gmail.com