It is now part of the campus at Cleveland State, a large urban university in a complex, multicultural city with a thriving, sometimes raucous literary community. The Writing Program office overlooks Lake Erie, the Indians' ball park, and a dramatic downtown skyline, but this is no ivory tower. The student spectrum ranges from multiple earrings to pinstripes to blue collars.
Students come here with a shirtsleeve workshop outlook, and traffic in ideas is eclectic and blunt.
This is a writing conference about strong, imaginative writing from minimal to magical realism, from mainstream to science fiction, from poetry to the novel. It includes classes and workshops without genre bias or boundaries, courses about distinctive creative writing, period. Moreover, during the week each workshop student meets in an individual conference with a second faculty member, carefully going over his or her work, for a second opinion. Each day ends with a reading. Conference lectures, panels, and readings are open to all applicants, but enrollment in each of the workshops will be limited.