In April 2011, the International Writing Program will launch Writers in Motion, a study tour of the Mid-Atlantic and the American South, where eight international writers will explore the theme of "Fall and Recovery." The writers will travel to Gettysburg, New Orleans, the Gulf Coast, Birmingham, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. to examine the different challenges presented by historical crises and upheavals, both natural and social. There's a notion of creative destruction and self-determination at the heart of one vision of America: people are infinitely capable of rising from the ashes, and are actually strengthened by it. Not all recovery is speedy—wounds to the social fabric and the environment heal slowly—but disasters reveal how communities and countries approach the complicated issue of regeneration.
Writers in Motion will introduce writers to such crucial historical events as the Civil War, Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill, and the Civil Rights movement, through all of which the writers will engage issues of race, class, and federal (versus local) governance. The visiting writers will meet with local writers, scientists, historians, and citizens, visit creative writing departments, and tour local landmarks and museums in an effort to deepen their understanding of both the complexity of United States history as well as the challenges of writing cohesively and comprehensively about disaster worldwide. An international filmmaker will accompany the delegation.
Throughout, the tour will be documented on a blog and, in addition to the documentary film, result in an essay collection.
Writers in Motion is sponsored through grant funds provided by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US Department of State.
Participants
Vicente Garcia Groyon won the Manila Critics Circle National Book Award both for the novel The Sky Over Dimas (2004) and for On Cursed Ground and Other Stories (2005); he is the editor of several anthologies and collections of Filipino fiction. He has written four film scripts, including Agaton and Mindy (2009) and Namets! (2008), and directed several shorts. He teaches creative writing at De La Salle University in Manila.
Alice Pung was born in Melbourne to Cambodian parents. Her memoir Unpolished Gem won the 2006 Australian Book Industry Association award for Newcomer of the Year, and other prizes. Her work was included in Best Australian Short Stories 2007, and a story collection, Growing Up Asian in Australia, appeared in 2008. My Father's Daughter will come out in 2011. A lawyer by trade, she contributes regularly to The Monthly and The Age.
Madeleine Thien is the author of Simple Recipes, a collection of stories, and Certainty, a novel, which was a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize and won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Her work has appeared inGranta,The Walrus, Five Dials, Brick, and theAsia Literary Review, and been translated into sixteen languages. In 2010 she received the Ovid Festival Prize, awarded to an international writer of promise. A novel, Dogs at the Perimeter, is forthcoming in 2011.
Other participants include Adisa Basić, Eduardo Halfon, Billy Karanja Kahora, Khet Mar, Kei Miller, and Sahar Sarshar.
More information here.
Writers in Motion will introduce writers to such crucial historical events as the Civil War, Hurricane Katrina, the BP oil spill, and the Civil Rights movement, through all of which the writers will engage issues of race, class, and federal (versus local) governance. The visiting writers will meet with local writers, scientists, historians, and citizens, visit creative writing departments, and tour local landmarks and museums in an effort to deepen their understanding of both the complexity of United States history as well as the challenges of writing cohesively and comprehensively about disaster worldwide. An international filmmaker will accompany the delegation.
Throughout, the tour will be documented on a blog and, in addition to the documentary film, result in an essay collection.
Writers in Motion is sponsored through grant funds provided by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US Department of State.
Participants
Vicente Garcia Groyon won the Manila Critics Circle National Book Award both for the novel The Sky Over Dimas (2004) and for On Cursed Ground and Other Stories (2005); he is the editor of several anthologies and collections of Filipino fiction. He has written four film scripts, including Agaton and Mindy (2009) and Namets! (2008), and directed several shorts. He teaches creative writing at De La Salle University in Manila.
Alice Pung was born in Melbourne to Cambodian parents. Her memoir Unpolished Gem won the 2006 Australian Book Industry Association award for Newcomer of the Year, and other prizes. Her work was included in Best Australian Short Stories 2007, and a story collection, Growing Up Asian in Australia, appeared in 2008. My Father's Daughter will come out in 2011. A lawyer by trade, she contributes regularly to The Monthly and The Age.
Madeleine Thien is the author of Simple Recipes, a collection of stories, and Certainty, a novel, which was a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize and won the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Her work has appeared inGranta,The Walrus, Five Dials, Brick, and theAsia Literary Review, and been translated into sixteen languages. In 2010 she received the Ovid Festival Prize, awarded to an international writer of promise. A novel, Dogs at the Perimeter, is forthcoming in 2011.
Other participants include Adisa Basić, Eduardo Halfon, Billy Karanja Kahora, Khet Mar, Kei Miller, and Sahar Sarshar.
More information here.
