WRITING & PUBLISHING

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Mr. Bosch (Director, Verse)
Mr. Reeder (Head of Publications, Prose Fiction)
Mr. Noone (Playwriting)

Recent Adjunct Tutors
Antonio Balson (Spanish Translation)
Jennifer Clarvoe (Verse)
Tom Daley (Dramatic Monologue)
Mohammed Nezam-Mafi (The Novel)

Writing & Publishing at Walnut Hill offers intensive, craft-based, studio art instruction in verse, playwriting, and prose fiction in parallel with hands-on, real-world training in literary editing and publishing.  

Writing & Publishing is constituted in part by the Writing Studio, a rotating set of courses, taught by working artists, that are not mere workshops but emphasize wide reading and rigorous observation, inference, and analysis leading to the testing of clearly-stated aesthetic values.  In these courses our writers play with words and sentences, give them physical voice, emulate them, decode them, draft, edit, and revise them. In careful exploration of texts written three thousand years (or three weeks) ago, writers in studio courses gradually acquire a writer’s commitment to power through clarity, precision, conciseness, and directness. They may dance with chance, but the studio is no place to play wallflower; our writers earn the wisdom of the Latin proverb, “If there is no wind, row.” And though they work hard in the company of friends, they exploit confluence rather than direct influence. Each studio writer is expected, over time, to pursue a distinct artistic vision. The writing studio humbly and delightedly recognizes students’ best writing may take place outside of or in addition to course requirements.

Writing & Publishing is also The Blue Pencil, a literary publisher.  As a member of the board that judges the annual Elizabeth Bishop Prizes and as a contributing editor at thebluepencil.net, The Blue Pencil (our traditional print magazine), and The Blue Pencil Press, each of our writers will write, solicit, judge, critique, edit, lay out, and archive writing submitted by young people from around the globe.  Under the supervision of studio faculty (with over twenty years’ combined professional journal experience), they will team up to take up the gamut of publishing and editing tasks and to shape The Blue Pencil’s aesthetic and ethical values.  The Blue Pencil offers job-like experience and gives each studio writer a chance to demonstrate concretely what they’ve learned about their craft and what it means to be a writer in relation to other writers.  

Thus Writing & Publishing fosters work in two closely-related modes, each of which provides a healthy context for the other:

Writing	Publishing
Expert instruction and mentorship in Verse, Prose Fiction, and Playwriting by writers who publish and win awards in their genre	Hands-on instruction and mentorship in practical criticism, editing, and publishing through The Blue Pencil, a publisher of good writing by young people
Small studio courses (six to ten writers on average), focused on “Sustainable Practices,” that aim for long-run artistic and intellectual development writers take two courses per semester	Cooperative and independent work for three entities:  The Blue Pencil (a traditional print magazine in its 74th volume, and the principal venue for The Elizabeth Bishop Prize Competitions), www.thebluepencil.net, and The Blue Pencil Press.
Emphasis on generic cross-fertilization  writers don’t “major” in a single genre and complete studio courses in at least three	Practical “round table” experience with development and maintenance of a challenging, ethical, and sustainable editorial vision
Close reading and emulation of high quality writing leads to construction of a distinct writerly “lineage” our writers do not write like their peers’—nor do they write like their teachers	Shared tasks, co-teaching, and graduated co-responsibility for: soliciting new work from young writers around the globe revising other writers’ work copy-editing correspondence with writers and readers archiving writing feature articles conducting and editing interviews
“If there is no wind, row”:  Programmatic emphasis on active pursuit of the next vision and/or re-vision	Participation in the annual judging of The Elizabeth Bishop Prizes and training in use of online submission management software
Training in vocal performance of text	Development of coherent and distinct values concerning publication of text and audio files on-line and publication of broadsides and chapbooks in more traditional paper formats
Senior Tutorials:  one-on-one courses in areas of special interest for Seniors in good standing	Cultivation of open and imaginative responses to the work of others, and a desire to see it presented in strong form
Writers who embrace our studio’s long-run approach win awards along the way:  National Scholastic Prizes, Princeton Poetry and Playwriting Prizes, the Smith Poetry Prize, the Foyle Poetry Prize	Writers who work at The Blue Pencil will graduate with demonstrable skills and resumés that reflect their creativity and responsiveness to a variety of editing and publishing work

 

The Writing Studio

Each Writing Studio semester begins with two weeks of intensive focus on a major literary work.  Students and teachers read the work aloud, discuss its elements, and write experiments designed to respond to the work and some of the issues it raises.  Works studied include Gilgamesh (David Ferry translation), Inferno (John Ciardi translation), War Music (Christopher Logue’s adaptation of The Iliad), Two Nigerian Plays: “Oba Waja” (Duro Ladipo) and “Death and the King’s Horseman” (Wole Soyinka), and Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.

Studio courses may engage the scope of an entire genre or focus more narrowly on specific techniques and problems. Courses generally bring seniors and first-years to the same table; studio writers teach each other, and it is as common for a senior to take heed of a first-year’s insights as it is for a first-year to receive a mini-tutorial from a senior. Studio writers are encouraged to be honest, direct respondents to their peers’ best efforts; they are required to compose and deliver clear, well-supported commentary that does not merely express a set of preferences. 

To remain in good standing, writers must attend and complete two studio courses per semester. Studio courses usually meet once a week, somewhat like college courses, and it is expected that writers will read and write extensively “outside” of studio hours.  With regard to keeping up with work, the writing studio is a lot like the Walnut Hill arts programs in Dance, Music, or Theatre: if one member of the quartet or corps or troupe has not done the required work, the whole program suffers.  Writers must keep in close contact with their artist teachers and advisors about their work; they are not expected to like each course in which they enroll, nor are they expected to be passive when difficulties arise.  Rather they are encouraged to give each course a substantial and earnest attempt; if a particular course aspect seems unproductive, they should negotiate with their course instructor a rigorous individual learning plan so that each course might be as satisfactory as possible.

Over the past five years, Writing Studio courses have included:

Experimental Writing Workshop            
Weekly composition of and feedback on anonymous “experiments”  (in prose and verse) that feature structural play and emulation

Snaps
Workshop dedicated to greater clarity, conciseness, and vividness in verbal imagery

Information through Dialogue
Close inspection of the kinds of information conveyed by dialogue in a play, and the many ways that this information can be communicated, in conjunction with a workshop on student experiments in dialogue

Transformations
Assisted “translation” of texts from French, German, Polish, Mandarin, Spanish, Russian, and other languages

Crafting Short Fiction
Intensive close reading of exemplary short fiction in conjunction with a workshop dedicated to the exploration of a specific fiction-writing concern—character, for example, or the uses of a moment of fictional time.

Ekphrasis
Experimental writing in response to investigation of visual images.

Folk Fairy Fiction
Broad survey of folktale strategies and motifs and investigation several culture’s tale-worlds, alongside composition of contemporary folktales—both on paper and on the air

Poetics
Introduction to and practice with figures of speech and principles of literary making such as metaphor, image, simile, alliteration, metonymy, paradox, irony, verse measure, stanza structure, narrative structure, paragraphs structure, and sentence structure

Meter & Measure
Historical introduction to linear and stanzaic measure in verse

Form Inverse
Close examination of formal verse alongside weekly experiments in such formal verse designs as the sonnet, poulter’s measure, pantoum, blank verse, syllabics, rime royal, and adaptations of the traditional Chinese quatrain

Seniors in good standing who have joined Writing & Publishing at least one semester before their senior year are generally granted the privilege of taking independent tutorials in specific areas of interest. Recent Senior Tutorials have engaged:

Translating French Poetry
The Blues
The Personal Essay
Text to Screen
The Sonnet
Hell
Nabokov
The Line of Verse in English       

Excursions
Writing & Publishing attends the biannual Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersey every other September. Writing & Publishing has been the guest of Toby Lester, Senior Editor of The Atlantic, for a tour of the magazine’s editorial offices and a discussion of literary journal editing. Atlantic editors have also come to the Studio to discuss their craft.  Boston and Cambridge offer us many readings and performances, for example Toni Morrison, Three Plays by Samuel Beckett in 2005.  

Visiting Writers
Writing & Publishing sponsors visits by practicing writers and editors who share their work and discuss their craft.  Some recent visitors include John Irving, Derek Walcott, Brad Leithauser, Eric McHenry, Janet Kenney, Andre Dubus III, Glynn Maxwell, Lloyd Schwartz, Nick McDonnell, Don Share, Perri Klass, and Gjertrud Schnackenberg. Every third year Writing & Publishing hosts a symposium on the perils and pleasures of translation.  This “Translators’ Notes” symposium has featured presentations by and discussions with translators such as David Ferry, Afaa Michael Weaver, Jacqueline Pope, Don Share, Marsha Pomerantz, and Harry Thomas.  Young writers and their teachers from the Boston area join Writing & Publishing for this event.

The Blue Pencil
The good example and the company of fellow artists notwithstanding, Writing, like painting, is a solitary art.  Though Writing & Publishing embraces this “fact,” it deliberately seeks to complement and to strengthen the inward-turn of the artist’s gaze with a corresponding outward gaze that takes in the writing of others and that endeavors to develop a profound sense of what sorts of written work should be made public and in what form(s).

Thus The Blue Pencil, one of the longest-running high school literary journals in the United States, has been transformed. Beginning in academic year 2008-2009 it will comprise three entities:  The Blue Pencil (the traditional print magazine), thebluepencil.net (an on-line journal), and The Blue Pencil Press, a publisher of literary broadsides.

Each member of the Writing & Publishing program is a contributing editor at The Blue Pencil and a member of the editorial board of the Elizabeth Bishop Prizes.  Each member will work with their peers and with Writing & Publishing faculty to achieve The Blue Pencil’s primary goal—to publish good writing by young people—through each its entities.  The Blue Pencil will meet twice a week to give assignments, to hear and argue about proposals, to discuss progress (or lack of progress) and strategy, and to discuss ethical considerations.  More experienced writers and editors will lead the way; but the less-experienced will find many roles to play. 

With the Head of Publications’ and the Director’s oversight at every step, the young writers and editors of The Blue Pencil develop real-application competencies.  Together with young writers from around the world, they test the grounds for an intra-subjective imagination and they put it into the best textual and audio forms they can imagine.