Community Of Writers

The Virtual Valley, established in 2020 in response to the pandemic lockdown, continues as a place for online workshops, intensives, individual manuscript consultations and more. It has developed as a broader, community-building wing of CW, where the practices of writing and reading can be developed year-round. The Writers Annex, established in 2021, offers quarterly courses on literary masters and movements. Its goal is to offer a space where esteemed poets and writers can teach courses that would otherwise not get taught. Instructors are encouraged to find oblique avenues into common subjects, or to bring understudied forms, poets, authors or movements to a new audience.

The Poetry Workshop, first established in 1983 by founder Galway Kinnell, is one of the most important workshops in the country, and one of the first to offer a generative format, as opposed to a strictly editorial one. The model is this: Each poet (participant or teaching staff) writes a new poem-draft every day for discussion in the morning workshops. The idea is that these are drafts and not completed works, and that the discussions must work to find what is working, and not dwell on what isnt. The workshop week may change poets approach to poetry, helping participants break through old habits and write something which may have previously been out of reach. Alumni names can be seen in some of this countrys foremost journals and prizes; indeed, each year brings many new alumni collections. Numerous past participants have returned to teach over the years.