Here is the information you will need before your arrival.

Fiction workshops

During orientation, you will meet briefly in your workshop groups; at this time, your workshop leader will give you any special instructions about how the week will run. At this point, you should have received an invitation to join the google group for your workshop. All the manuscripts for your workshop are posted at this site. Please contact Andrea (abewick@napavalley.edu) or Lakin (lakhan@sonic.net) if you’re having any problems accessing your google group or your manuscripts.

Our expectation is that you will have downloaded, read, critiqued and printed all of the manuscripts for your workshop. Computers (running Windows, Internet-enabled) and printers will be available to participants all week during normal conference hours (generally 8:30-4:30; the room may be open earlier or later depending on staff availability).

Poetry workshops

During orientation, you will meet briefly in your workshop groups; at this time, your workshop leader will give you any special instructions about how the week will run. As you know, workshops at Napa focus on the production of new work. Computers (running Windows, Internet-enabled) will be available to participants all week during normal conference hours (generally 8:30-4:30; the room may be open earlier or later depending on staff availability). You can bring a USB flash drive or plan to email yourself drafts to save the work you do here.

Unless your workshop leader instructs you otherwise, you will turn in your poems by 9 am (when the morning poetry lecture begins) and a volunteer will copy them and deliver them to your workshop room by the beginning of workshop at 10:15.

Poetry tutorial

Your ten- to fifteen-minute private tutorial with your workshop leader will focus on a single poem of your choice. Your workshop leader will give you some guidance as to how he or she plans to approach the tutorial. I recommend that you bring with you a few finished or unfinished poems from which to choose, as your idea of what will be most helpful to you may change after workshop begins. This is an opportunity for you to ask questions as well as to receive feedback one-on-one with your workshop leader. Tutorials will be scheduled at intervals during the week.

Daily schedule

You can see our preliminary grid schedule of the week. We’ll give you a detailed day-by-day schedule when you arrive.

Arrival

All daytime events, starting with check-in, are at the Upper Valley Campus (UVC) of Napa Valley College in St. Helena. The campus is small — only one parking lot, only two buildings — so you will have no difficulty finding the place where you check in.

Check-in

Check-in at the Upper Valley Campus of Napa Valley College begins at 3:45 pm on Sunday, July 26, with orientation scheduled to begin at 4:30 pm You’ll have a chance to meet briefly with your workshop leader, and at 6:00 pm we’ll have a reception and supper in the courtyard. At 7:30 pm, Carl Dennis and ZZ Packer will read. Please bring a sweater or light wrap as the evening may get cool.

Clothing and accessories

Temperatures are typically in the 90s during the day, dipping to the 50s at night, so bring summery clothes and a sweater or jacket. Casual dress is appropriate for everything — photos on the conference website give an idea of what people wear! With hot, dry conditions during the day, you’ll want to stay hydrated. We provide water coolers; we ask you to bring a personal water bottle or buy one at the conference so that we can avoid sending disposable cups to the landfill. Please also bring a portable coffee or hot drink cup as we will not be providing disposable ones. Special NVCWC cups, suitable for hot or cold drinks, will be sold at check-in for $3.

Shared rides

Rides from the airports are being sought and offered on the Google Group Napawriters2009. Email Nan (nvwcpoetry@gmail.com), Andrea, or Lakin if you have not yet received an invitation to join this group. We hope those of you with cars will be willing to help with rides during the week. Not only is it good to carpool for environmental reasons, but we’ll have a lot of participants from out of the area who need transportation. You are coming this summer from all over the United States, as well as abroad. At orientation, we will have the opportunity to make final arrangements for those who need rides to and from their lodging. Our experience has been that our participants with cars are generous in offering rides and that those without cars are generous in chipping in for gas or treating their drivers to amal. Some long-lasting friendships have been forged in this way.

Guests

If a guest has accompanied you to the conference, he or she may attend the reception on Sunday, July 26 and the picnic dinner on Thursday, July 30. We must ask you to please arrange this with Charlotte (writecon@napavalley.edu; 707-967-2903) by Wednesday, July 22. The cost for each guest is $22 per event; please pay us once you get to the conference, by check or cash.

Last-minute questions and emergencies

For any late-breaking questions, email Nan (nvwcpoetry@gmail.com) or Andrea (abewick@napavalley.edu). From Friday, July 24 through Sunday, July 26, no one will be available at the office to answer the telephone number or to receive email. In case of serious delay or emergency, call Nan or Andrea at the numbers given in your final email.

Looking forward to seeing you all in two weeks!

Elizabeth Alexander to read at President Obama’s inauguration on January 20. Alexander is a regular faculty member at the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.

“She was a faculty poet in July 2007, and was such a success we asked her back this summer. She’ll be teaching, reading and lecturing from July 26 to July 31. We’re enormously pleased for her and proud that President-elect Obama has picked one of our favorites,” said Anne Evans, Managing Director.

Elizabeth Alexander’s most recent collection of poems, American Sublime, was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize. Her other books of poetry are Antebellum Dream Book, Body of Life, and The Venus Hottentot. Also a scholar of African-American literature and culture, she has published a book of essays, The Black Interior.

Alexander is only the fourth poet in American history to read at an inauguration. Writing an “occasional poem” to commemorate a specific event is not precisely what Alexander does, according to an interview published in the New York Times on December 21, 2008. She declares herself to be ready for the challenge, however. “Writing an occasional poem has to attend to the moment itself,” the Times article quotes her as saying. “But what you hope for as an artist, is to create something that has integrity and life that goes beyond the moment.”

“Those of us who heard her read at Rubicon Winery in July, 2007, will be very excited to hear what she comes up with for the Inauguration. Her work is beautiful and very direct, very kinesthetic too,” said Evans.

Elizabeth Alexander is currently Professor of African-American Studies at Yale University. Her short stories and critical prose have been widely published in such periodicals and journals as Signs, The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, The Village Voice, The Women’s Review of Books, and The Washington Post, and her poems are widely anthologized.

Among her many honors and awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, the George Kent Award, and the Alphonse Fletcher, Sr., Fellowship for work that “contributes to improving race relations in American society and furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954.”

We’re in the final stages of preparation for the conference here in St. Helena and we’re looking forward to matching faces with the names and manuscripts we’ve been working with for the past few months.

Sunday schedule

We’ve mailed a tentative schedule for the week’s events. Check-in at the college begins at 3:45 pm on Sunday, July 27, with orientation scheduled to begin at 4:30 pm. You’ll have a chance to meet briefly with your workshop leader, and at 6 pm we’ll have a reception and supper in the courtyard. At 7:30 pm, Nick Flynn and Lan Samantha Chang will read. Please bring a sweater or light wrap as the evening may get cool.

Fiction lecture: “The Things They Carried”

Chang asks fiction participants to read Tim O’Brien’s short story “The Things They Carried” in preparation for her lecture, Tuesday, July 29, 1:30 pm, entitled “What is a Short Story? Structure and ‘The Things They Carried.’” The story is in the collection by the same title.

Transportation

For help with transportation, please post your needs on our Google Group, napawriters2008; if you haven’t yet joined, please email our poetry director Nan Cohen (nvwcpoetry@gmail.com) and she will sign you up.

We hope those of you with cars will be willing to help with rides during the week. Not only is it good to carpool for environmental reasons, but we’ll have a lot of participants from out of the area who need transportation. You are coming this summer from all over the United States, as well as abroad.

Guests

If a guest has accompanied you to the conference, he or she may attend the reception on Sunday, July 27 and the picnic on Thursday, July 31. We must ask you to please call and arrange this with Charlotte by Wednesday, July 23: email writecon@napavalley.edu or call 707-967-2903. The cost for each guest is $22 per event; please pay us once you get to the conference, by check or cash.

Last-minute contacts

From Friday morning, July 25, through Sunday afternoon, July 27, no one will be available at the office to answer the telephone number or to receive email. For any last-minute questions, email Andrea (abewick@napavalley.edu) or Nan (nvwcpoetry@gmail.com). In case of serious delay or emergency, please call Andrea or Nan at the phone numbers given in your final letter.

Copies of these materials will also be placed on the website.