2015 Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices

Author: Tony Valenzuela

October 15, 2014

Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices 

Announces Summer 2015 Workshop Faculty     

Applications Open Through January 5, 2015

Lambda Literary is proud to announce details of the 2015 Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices, the nation’s premier LGBTQ writers workshop and residency. The Retreat will be held June 22-29, 2015 on the campus of the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles.

Faculty include Justin Torres (Fiction workshop), Linda Villarosa (Nonfiction workshop), Kazim Ali (Poetry workshop), and Sara Ryan (Genre Fiction workshop-emphasis on Young Adult and Graphic Novels). Faculty bios are listed below. Applications are now open online.

In 2007, Lambda Literary founded the Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices, a residency designed to offer intensive and sophisticated instruction to selected writers over a carefully designed one-week period. The Retreat provides open access to industry professionals and the opportunity for writing fellows to create an ongoing community of practice as they advance in their craft and careers. It is one of Lambda’s most important initiatives: it represents the future of LGBTQ literature.

Applicants of the Retreat submit twenty pages of fiction/nonfiction or 10 pages of poetry that are evaluated for craft, creativity and originality. Twelve students per workshop are accepted into the competitive program where they spend the week working on their manuscripts, attending guest lectures led by publishing industry professionals, and participating in public readings. Ability to pay is in no way part of the decision-making process and scholarships are widely available. The LLF Writers Retreat Fellows have gone on to publish an impressive array of works.

Lambda Fellows (Retreat graduates) are invited to return to attend faculty-led workshops or as “Writers in Residence” to work on a book in progress without needing to enroll in a workshop. Lambda Fellows should contact Kyle Sawyer, Programs Coordinator, at admin@lambdaliterary.org for more information.

Entering its 9th year, the Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices has gained an international reputation for nurturing our most talented writers and building a highly accomplished, diverse and engaged community of artists committed to advancing LGBTQ literature.

APPLY TODAY!

SUMMER 2015 FACULTY

 

FICTION WORKSHOP – JUSTIN TORRES    

Justin Torres is author of the best-selling novel We the Animals, which won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and has been translated into fifteen languages. He has published short fiction in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, Tin House, The Washington Post, Glimmer Train, Flaunt, and other publications, as well as non-fiction pieces in publications like The Guardian and The Advocate. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a Lambda Literary Fellow, and most recently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. The National Book Foundation named him one of 2012’s 5 Under 35. He has been the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Rolón Fellowship in Literature from United States Artists. He has taught at Columbia University, Lesley University’s Low Residency MFA Program, and The Writers’ Foundry MFA Program at St. Joseph’s College. Justin is currently a 2014-2015 Cullman Center Fellow at The New York Public Library. 

NONFICTION WORKSHOP – LINDA VILLAROSA  

Linda Villarosa is a journalist, author, editor, novelist and college professor. She runs the journalism program at the City College of New York in Harlem and teaches writing and media studies. For several years, she edited the health pages of The New York Times and later spent six years as a contributing New York Times reporter. As the executive editor of Essence Magazine she wrote or edited a number of award-winning articles.

Linda has also contributed to Glamour, Health, Latina, Ms., O Magazine and Vibe. She writes for The Root, Slate, AfterEllen and The Amsterdam News. Near the start of the AIDS epidemic, as a beginning reporter for Essence, Linda wrote the first article to examine HIV/AIDS in an ethnic publication. A number of years later, two of her stories on African-Americans and HIV/AIDS appeared on the front page of The New York Times. Linda has authored/co-authored a number of books, including Body & Soul: The Black Women’s Guide to Physical Health andEmotional Well-Being, which sold over 200,000 copies. Her first novel, Passing for Black, was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. Most recently, she wrote autobiographical essays for the anthologies Here Come the Brides and The Letter Q.

POETRY WORKSHOP – KAZIM ALI

Kazim Ali is currently on the faculty of Oberlin College where he is associate professor of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature and the Director of the Creative Writing Program. His volumes of poetry include Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry, The Far Mosque, The Fortieth Day, and the poetic memoir Bright Felon, Autobiography and Cities which was finalist for the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry, the Lantern Award in Memoir and the Asian American Literary Award. He has also published the novels Quinn’s Passage, named one of the Best Books of 2005 by Chronogram, and The Disappearance of Seth and Wind Instrument. He is the author of three collections of essays, Orange Alert: Essays on Poetry, Art and the Architecture of Silence, Resident Alien: On Border Crossing and the Undocumented Divine, and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. He is the translator of Water’s Footfall and Oasis of Now: Selected Poems, both by Sohrab Sepehri, as well as the novel L’Amour by Marguerite Duras. He is the founding editor of the small press Nightboat Books as well as the Series Editor for the Poets on Poetry Series from the University of Michigan Press.

GENRE FICTION WORKSHOP – SARA RYAN   
Emphasis on YA Literature and Graphic Novels 

Sara Ryan is the author of the YA novels Empress of the World (Lambda Literary Award finalist, ALA Best Book for Young Adults, Oregon Book Award winner, Booklist Top Ten Teen Romance) and The Rules for Hearts (Oregon Book Award winner, Junior Library Guild selection), and the graphic novel Bad Houses (TIME Magazine Top Ten Graphic Novels & Comics of 2013, USA Today Best of 2013 Comics & Graphic Novels). Her shorter comics include the Eisner Award finalist “Me and Edith Head.” She lives in Portland, Oregon with a cartoonist and a cat, and works as the Teen Services Specialist for Multnomah County Library.