Workshop Days

January 17, 2019

John Dufesne, Kevin Young and Shayne 

Hemingway House

Workshop Days

The completion of the Key West Literary Seminar is not the end of the work for the board and staff, as the week following the seminar hosts ten literary workshops and another week of evening events that are unique to the workshop crowd. The week kicks off with a welcome dinner for all the workshop participants at the Hemingway House.

This dinner features a cocktail hour and then a dinner in which the workshop participants are paired with their instructor and get to meet their fellow students. This year’s workshop program once again featured a stellar line-up of faculty teaching all manner of literary forms from Flash Fiction to Comic Writing to Poetry to Short Stories and Novels. Among the writers here this year were John Dufresne, Dan Menaker, Gregory Pardio,Emily Raboteau, Richard Russo, Dara Wier, Joy Williams and Kevin Young. 

Richard Russo, Joy Williams and John Dufresne

The Hemingway House is beautiful at night and this was yet another perfect weather evening. It was great to mingle with the workshop participants, who come from across the country to attend the week-long workshops. I think they really enjoy the opportunity to enjoy one of Key West’s literary treasures, where Hemingway lived and wrote some of his most famous work. They also seemed to enjoy the many six-toed cats, which I do as well as they run around the grounds without fear of the crowd.

The same night as the opening dinner, was the kick-off of the other wonderful literary gems that is available each season in Key West, the Friends of the Key West Library lecture series, which features 10 weeks of Monday evening readings or lectures, held this year at the Old City Hall. I have a soft spot on this wonderful series as I previously was the organizer of the series when I was on the Friends of the Library board. It is now in the capable hands of my friend Mark Hedden.

 

Marsha

The opening lecture, co-sponsored by the Literary Seminar, featured one of the writers that was in town for the seminar, Madeline Miller who presented on her amazing novel “Circe”. The lectures are free, but space is limited to the available seating and every single seat was full for Miller’s talk. It was a great way to start this season’s series which will continue each Monday evening for the next nine weeks.

Madeline Miller

Victoria

The next evening was another busy one for me, as Kathy and I started the evening at the pre-meeting rally at City Hall hosted by Reef Relief prior to the City Commission Meeting. A couple of hundred were on hand rallying in support of banning certain kinds of sunscreens that contain chemicals that have been shown in some scientific studies to be terribly detrimental to Reef health.

Dora

It was the first Reef Relief sponsored event that I have attended in many years, since I stopped working there in 2005. I have not paid a lot of attention to what they have been up to, other than to know that they have run the very successful Coral Camp program for kids. They seemed to have lacked a definitive direction and been hesitant to get involved in direct action. I was especially disappointed that they did not play a larger role in the Gulf Oil spill when the Deepwater Horizon tragedy happened.

Suzanne

 

Lately though, they seem to have a renewed interest in getting more politically active, first with their ban the plastic straw initiative and now with this advocacy to stop these chemicals from hurting the reef. It was like old times and I saw many familiar activist faces from the old days. Their work seemed initially successful as well as the commission voted 7-0 in their favor. It was only the first reading but still a great start and outcome for our community.

After the rally and an hour or so of listening to public comment at the commission meeting, Kathy and I headed over to the Studios of Key West where the Literary Seminar workshop program was hosting an evening of “Craft Talks” featuring the writers who were on hand as workshop faculty. John Dufresne, Kevin Young, Gregory Pardlo, Kate Tuttle and Emily Raboteau all gave presentations on the craft of writing in an event that was open to the public in addition to the workshop students.

Emily

Kate Tuttle and Emily Raboteau

Freya and Katrin