Though most writers' conferences take place over the summer, now is a good time to contact the directors of these conferences and ask that you be added to their mailing list. A week's intensive workshop in August in which you write a new poem every day and have it critiqued by staff poets such as Galway Kinnell, Sharon Olds, Yusef Kommunyakaa, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, and Lucille Clifton. Workshops take place in the living rooms of ski lodges when the stellar's jay and mule ears are abundant. Each teaching poet delivers an afternoon craft lecture and an evening reading. The short trip to Lake Tahoe for a beach barbecue mid-week relieves the intensity of this workshop.
Some scholarships are available.
Expect to form lasting friendships. The confluence of wine grapes and poetry. Less intense than the Squaw conference, the Napa conference offers a place to convene for fellowship and for a serious concentration on craft. Workshops are held at the Napa Valley College's new facility in the historic village of St. Helena near the Napa River. Participants discuss new works generated at the conference in the morning workshop sessions, and also have the opportunity to have a private manuscript consultation with one faculty poet in the afternoon.