Tisa Bryant Workshop Retreat

Try Anything: A Lab for New Writing
May 29 to June 2, 2011

According to the Oxford Dictionary, an experiment is defined as "an action of trying anything." To try to reproduce the mind's questions, the eye's scrutiny of place, relation, space, the meaning of being in the world, alive and feeling, may demand that we break rules, trespass borders, re-imagine the embodied voice, its language of signs and symbols. What does one do when such attempts at translating ourselves are not easily contained within a single genre, form or register? This class is lab for such questioning, regeneration and discovery. We will create new writing borne from the Millay environment, the bodies of your own poems, essays, fictions or plays, all inspired by various source texts, trunks of special junk and myriad cellular memories. We will make new writing that functions on a number of levels (or not at all!), by design, or by the nature of the beast. Throughout, we'll share our own attempts, findings, failures and intentions, and encourage deeper forays into creative possibility. Requirements: Bring some old, new, or in progress works, and try to give yourself over to fascination, obsession and different ways of doing.

Tisa Bryant is the author of Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007), a collection of hybrid essays on black presences in film, literature and visual art. She is co-editor of the cross-referenced journal of narrative and storytelling possibility, The Encyclopedia Project, which produced Encyclopedia Vol. 2 F-K, in 2010. She is also co-editor of War Diaries, an anthology on black gay men’s desire and survival, published in 2010 by AIDS Project Los Angeles. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in the journals 1913, Animal Shelter, Mandorla, Mixed Blood, in the ‘zine, Universal Remote: Meditations on the Absence of Michael Jackson, and the solo exhibits of visual artists Jaime Cortez, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, and filmmaker/installation artist Cauleen Smith. She teaches prose, hybrid forms and innovative ethnic literature at the California Institute of the Arts.

The Millay Colony for the Arts offers four-day retreat workshops on Colony's sylvan setting. Each class includes twelve hours of workshop time, all meals, and ample time to work, ruminate and explore our lush natural surroundings. Private bedrooms and spacious private studios are available for all participants.

These workshops offer artists a chance to delve into their work, explore new ideas, meet extraordinary teaching artists and collaborate with others while spending intense work-time on our gorgeous campus. Fragrant with blueberries, thyme, and wildflowers, the quiet loveliness of our campus provides uninterrupted calm and inspiration—the perfect retreat for creativity and relaxation.

For more information and to apply: http://www.millaycolony.org/workshops