The Black Fly Writers Retreat is an inspiring four-day, three-night weekend of workshops, readings, and writing. The 2020 Black Fly Writers Retreat will be held from Thursday, April 30–Sunday, May 3.
Application Deadline: April 22, 2020
Payment Options
MAIL: MWPA, Attn: 2020 Black Fly Writers Retreat, 314 Forest Avenue #313, Portland ME 04101
PHONE: Call to have your registration and payment processed over the phone: 207.228.8263
ONLINE: Pay online using the menu below
Workshops
Lifting Up Your Reader's Heart
Fiction with Brock Clarke
Even the greatest fiction writers sometimes have trouble reaching their readers. The fiction writer Flannery O’Connor admitted as much in her essay “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction”: “I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And it seems her heart had not been lifted up by anything of mine she had read. I think that if her heart had been in the right place, it would have been lifted up.’’
This is a most wanted writerly medical procedure: to move someone else’s heart to the place where a writer can then lift it up.
In this workshop, attendees will read each other’s stories or novel excerpts with an eye toward perfecting exactly this kind of surgery. Participants will also talk about how to get their work out in the world, into the hands of agents, editors, and readers.
SUBMIT After registering, participants in the fiction workshop are asked to submit a manuscript of up to 5,000-words by no later than 9:00 a.m. on April 23. Manuscripts may be complete short stories or excerpts from novels. Please email the manuscripts as attachments to director@mainewriters.org with the subject line: “CLARKE BLACK FLY MSS.” *Word files are preferred, but you may also send a PDF. Please note: there is no printing available at the retreat location.
Brock Clarke is the author of eight books of fiction, most recently the novel Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? (2019), and has won the Mary McCarthy Prize for Fiction, the Prairie Schooner Book Series Prize, and a National Endowment for Arts Fellowship. Clarke’s individual stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Virginia Quarterly Review, One Story, Southern Review, The Believer, and the New England Review, and have appeared in the annual Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South anthologies and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. He lives in Portland, Maine, and is the A. LeRoy Greason Chair of English and Creative Writing at Bowdoin College.
Beneath the Iceberg
Memoir with Mira Ptacin
Unlike autobiography, memoir does not need to include every part of one’s life. A truly good memoir is more like a series of Polaroid snapshots, highlighting the key moments or a specific time period in a person’s life that deliver a thesis statement or answer a question.
In this class, attendees will break down the most potent threads of the tapestry of one’s life and identify each page’s purpose. We will engage in the skills essential to great memoir and literary writing—scene, characterization, dialogue, and point of view—to delve into the following questions: What does this life illustrate? What has the narrator learned from his or her life? What larger issues are being explored? What’s beneath the iceberg? What is my thesis statement? What are my intentions?
We will also look at what comes next: how to prepare excerpts for submissions as stand-alone pieces? What is an agent and when—if even—should I acquire one? What do I want to do with this memoir? What is my ultimate goal here? Class will have take-home prompts, in-class exercises, as well as assigned “Rx” readings.
Participants will be required to review one or two peer manuscripts (using provided guidelines) prior to the retreat.
SUBMIT: After registering, participants in the memoir workshop are asked to submit a manuscript of up to 1000-words by no later than 9:00 a.m. on April 22. Please email the manuscripts as attachments to director@mainewriters.org with the subject line: “PTACIN BLACK FLY MSS.” *Word files are preferred, but you may also send a PDF. Please note: there is no printing available at the retreat location.
Mira Ptacin is the author of the critically acclaimed genre-bending book of history and memoir The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna (Liveright, 2019) as well as the award-winning memoir Poor Your Soul (Soho Press 2016). Her work has been published in New York Magazine, Guernica, Down East, Tin House, LitHub, NPR, and more. Formerly an instructor at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, Ptacin lives on Peaks Island with her family and is at work on her third book of nonfiction.
Finding Surprise
Poetry with Stuart Kestenbaum
Robert Frost says “no surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” This workshop will provide opportunities to create poems from images, memory, and observation. Activities will focus on generating new work and include short and long writing exercises, looking at examples of other writers, and discussing each other’s work. We’ll start without judging and follow the work where it needs to go.
SUBMIT: After registering, participants in the memoir workshop are asked to send ONE poem for critique/discussion during the retreat no later than 9:00 a.m. on April 22. Please email the manuscripts as attachments to director@mainewriters.org with the subject line: “KESTENBAUM BLACK FLY MSS.” *Word files are preferred, but you may also send a PDF. Please note: there is no printing available at the retreat location.
Stuart Kestenbaum is the author of five collections of poems, most recently How to Start Over (Deerbrook Editions, 2019) and a collection of essays The View From Here (Brynmorgen Press, 2012). The director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts from 1988 to 2015, he has written and spoken widely on craft making and creativity. He is currently serving as Maine’s poet laureate. Former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser has written “Stuart Kestenbaum writes the kind of poems I love to read, heartfelt responses to the privilege of having been given a life. No hidden agendas here, no theories to espouse, nothing but life, pure life, set down with craft and love.”
Schedule
While Thursday’s afternoon arrival is a chance for participants to have a casual meet and greet, plus evening dinner and reading together, the workshop sessions kick into high great first thing Friday. Please see the day-to-day schedule below.
Weekend Schedule
Thursday, April 30
Check In (Shoreline Camps)
1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Workshop Introductions
4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Welcome & Cocktails (Weatherby’s)
5:30 p.m.
Dinner (Weatherby’s)
6:00 p.m.
Faculty Reading
8:00 p.m.
Friday, May 1
Workshop: Part 1
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Lunch (Picnic)
12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Free Time / One-on-One Sessions
2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Cocktails (Weatherby’s)
5:00 p.m.
Dinner (Weatherby’s)
6:00 p.m.
Faculty Reading
8:00 p.m.
Saturday, May 2
Workshop: Part 2
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Lunch (Picnic)
12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Free Time / One-on-One Sessions
2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Cocktails (Weatherby’s)
5:00 p.m.
Dinner (Weatherby’s)
6:00 p.m.
Participant Reading
8:00 p.m.
Sunday, May 3
Workshop: Part 3
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Lunch (Weatherby’s)
12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Farewell & Bon Voyage!
Registration Options
OPTION #1 | Single Room
Single rooms are now sold out. Please call the MWPA office if you cannot be in a shared room to discuss other options.
OPTION #2 | Shared Room
This all-inclusive retreat package includes lodging, meal plan (provided by Weatherby’s), and workshop fees. The meal plan includes dinner on Thursday, lunch and dinner on both Friday and Saturday, and lunch on Sunday. Shoreline Camps features rustic cabins and shared rooming may be a double room, or may be as many as four attendees in a large, “camp style” room.
→ MWPA Members: $625 | Nonmembers: $700
OPTION #3 | Lodging/No Meals
In the interest of offering the Black Fly Writing Retreat at various price points, this option includes only lodging and workshop fees. Attendees may then prepare their own meals in their cabins. *Attendees may choose Option #3 and pay a la carte for select lunches and dinners.
→ MWPA Members: $450 | Nonmembers: $550
OPTION #4 | Commuter
If you are lucky enough to live in the beautiful northeast of Maine (or would prefer to stay at Weatherby’s) and can drive to Shoreline Camps in Grand Lake Stream, you may take advantage of this option and attend the workshops but forgo lodging and meals. *Atteendees may choose Option #4 and pay a la carte for lunches and dinners.
→ MWPA Members: $300 | Nonmembers: $350
Accommodations
Shoreline Camps is a cluster of rustic, lakeside cabins. Each cabin will house a varying number of Black Fly Writers Retreat attendees. Each cabin includes an equipped kitchen (gas stoves, refrigerators, coffee makers, dishes, silverware, etc.), fresh linens, wool blankets, and bath towels (please bring your own soaps and shampoos). Each cabin includes a wood stove and outdoor fireplace with complementary firewood.
Details
You may want to bring: extra blankets/bedding or a sleeping bag if you’re prone to being chilly. It’s spring in northern Maine, so think “layers” as you pack clothing. Shoreline Camps is wonderfully dark, so you want to bring a flashlight/headlamp if you’re planning any evening strolls.
Cellular & Wifi: Please note that there is limited cellular service at Shore Line Camps and no wi-fi access. There is, however, both cellular and wi-fi access at Weatherby’s, where attendees will enjoy evening drinks and meals.
Market: There is a small general store less than three miles from Shore Line Camps (Pine Tree Store), so don’t worry if you forget cream and sugar for your coffee!
Meals
All attendees are responsible for supplying their own breakfasts. While attendees will prepare their own breakfasts from their own breakfast supplies in the fully equipped cabin kitchens (please, no fighting over the coffeemaker), the group will come together for picnic lunches at Shoreline Camps and dinners at Weatherby’s, one of the oldest hunting and fishing lodges in Maine. Weatherby’s is located at 112 Millford Road, roughly five minutes down the road from Shoreline Camps.
Typical lunches will consist of sandwich, chips, fruit, desserts, lemonade, iced tea, hot coffee, and hot tea. Sandwiches will include tuna, turkey, roast beef, ham and cheese.
Typical dinners will consist of fresh rolls, salad, home made soup, entree, dessert, coffee, iced tea, and lemonade. Entrees is past years have included roast turkey, spaghetti and meatballs, beef, and pork tenderloin. Beer and wine will be available for an extra fee.