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 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 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 or Nan. 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.

Of this book, Anne Lamott said, “Like everything Coppola writes, these are richly told stories of family and film and solitude. Spanning year of creation and joy, she is a narrator you trust to pay the most wonderful attention to what is real and human in life.”

The evening begins at 6:30 with a wine reception, continues with a 7 pm program and finishes with a gala dessert reception and book signing. Desserts are by the Napa Valley Cooking School. Admission is $40 with proceeds going jointly to the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and Music in the Vineyards. Call 258-5559 for ticket reservations.

Bryan Tso Jones (’05) won a first books competition from Bedbug Books. His book will be out this year.

Daniel Polikoff (most recently ‘07) has published his first book, “Dragon Ship.”

In fiction, we’ll welcome Ron Carlson, Lan Samantha Chang, Ehud Havazelet, and Ann Packer.

In poetry, we’ll have Mark Doty, Nick Flynn, Brenda Hillman, and Claudia Rankine.