[Cwgrad-announcements] FW: SLS: Literature, Russia and Kenya

[cwgrad-announcements at lists.ucr.edu]

FYI




Organization: Summer Literary Seminars
Reply-To: kenya at sumlitsem.org
From: "Thomas Burke" <kenya at sumlitsem.org>
To: <maurya.simon at ucr.edu>
Subject: SLS: Literature, Russia and Kenya

Dear people on the Summer Literary Seminars (St. Petersburg,
Russia/Nairobi-Lamu, Kenya) mailing list - friends and friends of friends of
the program, SLS participants past and future, writers, poets, lovers of
literature - 

 

This is a mid-season program update. The St. Petersburg-06 SLS session has
just come to a close. It was our largest (almost 120 participants, more than
twenty faculty members) and, in all senses of the word, most successful
program to date. This year we added to the list of our offerings the first
SLS Russian Workshop, comprised of 17 talented young Russian writers and
poets and led by the internationally renowned author Sergey Gandlevsky - one
of <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Russia's most prominent poets
and novelists. We intend to expand the scope and further variegate the
nature of the Russian Workshop in 2007, deepening its ties with the "main"
program - thereby, hopefully, facilitating a greater degree of artistic
exchange and creative cooperation between the writers and poets living on
different continents. Currently in development is the idea of an
SLS-organized Russian literary contest whose winners will have the
opportunity to present their work to North American literary audiences and
participate in the SLS program in Kenya. We are also thinking of the new
ways to present the work by the talented young American writers to the
reading public in Russia. More on this - in our future updates and on the
SLS website: www.sumlitsem.org <http://www.sumlitsem.org/> .

 

SLS-Kenya: for the next few months, it will become the primary focus of our
attention. This year, the program will be held between December 14-28 - and
it will be a vibrantly fascinating and ground-breaking one, too: the only
literary conference of such kind in sub-Saharan Africa. Organized in
affiliation with our old friend and partner in Kenya, the Kwani? literary
magazine and trust, it will feature an international faculty made up of some
of the leading North American and African writers - and an equally eclectic
and diverse cast of North American and local participants. It will be an
unforgettable two weeks on the equator. The hallmark of the SLS-Kenya
program is that special closeness of creative spirit and literary interests
which enables writers reared in starkly dissimilar cultures instantly to
develop strong artistic bonds and, often, commence to work on joint literary
projects. 

 

As for the immense visual richness and emotional intensity of East Africa,
the frenetic excitement of Nairobi, the boundless solitary vistas of the
great Rift Valley, the shimmering Indian Ocean coast, the dizzying
timelessness of the Old Lamu town - we won't even attempt to describe any of
that. Kenya is one of those rare places in the world one has to see with
one's own eyes just in order to believe that it exists.

 

Currently SLS is accepting submissions for its Kenya-06 Literary Contest,
held jointly with the Maisonneuve (Canada) and Tin House (USA) magazines.
The complete contest guidelines can be found on the SLS-Kenya website:
www.sumlitsem.org/kenya. Winning entries will be published in Tin House
(fiction and poetry; final judges - magazine's editors) and Maisonneuve
(non-fiction; final judge Phillip Lopate); first prize winners will also
receive all-expense-paid trips to Kenya with the SLS-06 program.

(POSTMARK DEADLINE: September 15th)

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />


All the information about the SLS-Kenya program, along with the online
application form, can be found on the program website:
www.sumlitsem.org/kenya. 

 

Interesting, exciting days and months await us. We look with optimism to the
future. And we look forward to hearing from you - and hopefully, seeing some
of you in the months and years to come, be it in Kenya or St. Petersburg, or
North America.

 

 

All Very Best,

Warmly,

Summer Literary Seminars

 

As always, if you'd like to be removed from this mailing list, please hit
reply and type REMOVE as the subject.

 

 

Maurya Simon

Professor 
Department of Creative Writing
University of California Riverside
900 University Avenue
Riverside, CA 92521-0318

TEL. (951) 827-2006 (office)

FAX: (951) 827-3619 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucr.edu/pipermail/cwgrad-announcements/attachments/20060822/57648e47/attachment.html