Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Remember the Magic Writing Conference at Brown University!

"Remember the Magic"

June Gould, an IWWG member living in Fairfield, CT, will be teaching at the IWWG summer conference at Brown Univerity in Providence, RI, July 30th to August 6th.  See press release below:
Women's Summer Writing Conference at Brown University

For the first time, Brown University will be hosting "Remember the Magic," the International Women's Writing Guild's 34th Annual Summer Conference, July 30-August 6, 2010. The conference, which offers 50 workshops each day (no portfolio necessary), is open to all women. June Gould, Ph.D. who is from Fairfield, Connecticut and the author of The Writer in All of Us: Improving your Writing Through Childhood Memories will be leading the 25th year of her workshop: "Writing In the 21st Century: A workshop for poets, fiction writers, essayists, novelists, creative non-fiction writers and aspiring writers."

Of the 50 workshops offered, 12 workshops express IWWG's original reason for being - the Transformation of Self through Writing - which it has fostered long before publishers accepted memoirs and autobiographies from persons who were not celebrities.

The remaining 38 daily writing workshops fall into six major headings: The Art & Craft of Writing, Marketing and Publishing, Transformation of Self, Non-Linear Knowledge, and The Arts, the Body & Health, plus daily Critique Sessions where the work of the conferees is read out loud and helpfully critiqued.

Stay for a week, five days, weekend, or commute on a daily basis. 

Please key in
www.iwwg.org for further particulars.

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For those of you who have never attended a "Remember the Magic" Conference, or for those who have not attended for some time, I'd like to share a story about my own experience at the first conference I attended at Skidmore College in 1995.

I learned about IWWG through a facilitator while attending a Writers' Retreat at Mohonk Mountain House in NY state.  I had just begun a bachelor's degree program in liberal arts a year or two before.

At the conference I found myself without a traveling partner.  I hadn't done much solo traveling and was so nervous about the possibility of bunking with a stranger that I arranged for my own room even thought it was much more affordable to share.

During the four days I was at Skidmore I got lost many times trying to get from my room to the college buildings for my workshops.  I was introverted then and younger than many of the beautifiul women dressed in what I've come to term affectionately goddesswear: sophisticated and colorful tunics, handmade and exotic jewelry, embroidered scarves.

I had a map, a list of classes I wanted to attend, a notebook and a look on my face that said 'please be my friend'.

During those workshops I met the most extraordinary teachers and students from all over the world.  Women who were eager to share their loving spirits with each other and with me.  For them, the written word wasn't a catch-phrase but rather a way of life.

I left there a new person.  I left with more confidence and with a better sense of who I was in the world.  I saw in others my own potential.  I was listened to as a woman and as a writer. I was seen.

To this day I still have ties with Dorothy Randall Grey and Jan Phillips, now two of the IWWG board members.  They inspire me, they hold me in their hearts, they help me to remember how important it is for me to tell my story.

I'm convinced that I would not be the person I am today without all of the workshops and unions I've made with women since that conference both through IWWG and beyond.  It was at that first conference that I found the courage to see myself as a writer. It was there that I learned how to form alliances with women who are creators, who are interested in teaching themselves and each other about how to live more powerfully in this world.

Whether you desire connection with other women writers or you just need to remember yourself, whether you want to get away from the routine of your day-to-day or you've made yourself a promise too long ago that you would take yourself more seriously as a writer, you owe it to yourself to join the women of IWWG and "Remember the Magic."