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

Tue May 15 09:17:53 PDT 2007

Dear friends in literature,

Greetings! This is the Summer Literary Seminars mid-session program update.
Contents include:

1. SLS-Russia 2007   June 17th-July 13th 

2. SLS-Kenya 2007 Contest in Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry Is Now Open

3. SLS-Kenya 2007 Program Updates

________________________________________________________________________

1.

SLS-RUSSIA 2007

The SLS-St. Petersburg 2007 program will be underway in less than a month,
and it is shaping up to be one of our most interesting programs to date. In
addition to our month-long offerings of workshops, lectures, readings, and
literary excursions, we are especially excited to incorporate into our main
program two Russian-language creative writing classes; these will be taught
by the internationally renowned Moscow poet and novelist, twice Russian
Booker Prize winner Sergey Gandlevsky and popular prose writer and literary
critic Leonid Kostyukov. Creative writing workshops are still an exceedingly
rare phenomenon in Russia, and it is SLS's hope that this program will
stimulate literary interest in talented young Russian writers, as well as
facilitate a greater degree of artistic exchange between poets and writers
living on different continents. Along similar lines, SLS is also holding the
First Annual Russian Language Creative Writing Contest for Russians, open to
any poet or prose writer composing in Russian, regardless of his/her
geographic coordinates. The results will be announced by June 1, and the
winner in each category will have his or her work published in the leading
Russian literary magazine Znamya, and (in translation) in the prestigious US
literary journal Agni Review; additionally, he/she will win an
all-expense-paid trip to our 2007 SLS-Kenya program. We're very glad to see
our vision for the scope of our programs beginning to come to fruition at
this time, and we look forward to fostering, through the continued global
promotion of mutually enriching literary ideas, an even greater variety of
strong new literary voices worldwide.  

As ever-and even more avidly than ever, this year-we eagerly anticipate
getting back to Russia and meeting our old friends and making new ones,
talking literature in the paradigmatically literary, literature-begotten
city of St. Petersburg; to waking and working amidst the sheer ethereality
of Petersburg's White Nights, the echoing midnight silences of granite-clad,
Neva-bound vistas of that ineffably majestic city. 

The 2007 Russia program still has a few spots left for last-minute
participants, but act quickly!  

2.  

SLS-KENYA CONTEST IS NOW ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS!

We are very pleased to announce that our 2nd Annual SLS-Kenya Contests in
Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry, held in affiliation with the St. Petersburg
Review (USA) and Maisonneuve ( Canada) magazines, is now OPEN! Winners will
receive an all-expense-paid trip to the 2007 SLS-Kenya program (airfare,
housing and tuition) AND publication of their winning entries in the St.
Petersburg Review (fiction and poetry) and Maisonneuve (nonfiction)
magazines. 

Guest judges:

Poetry: Robert Hass 

Fiction: Fiona McCrae (Editor-in-Chief/Publisher, Graywolf Press)

Nonfiction: Josip Novakovich

Please visit our website for complete contest guidelines:
<http://www.sumlitsem.org/kenya/contests.aspx>
http://www.sumlitsem.org/kenya/contests.aspx 

Postmark Deadline: October 1, 2007

3.

SLS-KENYA 2007 PROGRAM UPDATES 

With preparations for this summer's Russia program nearly complete, we have
begun transferring our efforts towards our unique, one-of-a-kind Kenya
program, and we're happy to inform friends of SLS that 2007 will be our
largest and most successful program ever. It will be held this December
14th-28th, and we are again offering SLS-Kenya in cooperation with our
longtime friends and partners at the Nairobi-based Kwani Magazine and
Trust-the most prominent, dynamic and exciting literary organization in East
Africa. The program 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. 

SLS-Kenya will include intensive genre workshops, a great variety of
readings and lectures, formal and informal discussions-all with an emphasis
on facilitating personal connections between writers living in different
countries, on different continents, worlds apart, in separate hemispheres.
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 successfully on joint literary projects. 

And, as we've learned from many years of visiting that glorious land,
there's no use attempting to describe the unfathomable beauty and cultural
riches of East Africa -- the bright, powerful undercurrents of an energy-mad
megapolis of Nairobi, the boundless solitary plains of the Great Rift
Valley, the shimmering Indian Ocean coast, or the dizzying timelessness of
our second destination of Lamu Island's Old Town. Kenya is one of those rare
places in the world that one must experience with one's own eyes. 

SLS-Kenya 2007 faculty and guests include:

Doreen Baingana

George Elliot Clarke

Muthoni Garland

Stanley Gazemba

Robert Hass

Brenda Hillman

Parsalelo Kantai

Josip Novakovich

Linda Spalding

Binyavanga Wainaina

Colson Whitehead

Special Guests from Russia

and many more TBA

All the information about the SLS-Kenya program, along with the online
application form (we are currently accepting applications), can be found on
the program website:  <http://www.sumlitsem.org/kenya>
www.sumlitsem.org/kenya . 

4. 

We wish you all relaxing and productive summers, and we look forward to
hearing from you-and seeing some of you in the months and years to come, be
it in Russia in a few weeks, in Kenya next December, or North America. 

 All Very Best,

Warmly,

Summer Literary Seminars

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