Retreat

About

The Anaphora Writing Retreat is a program designed to bring writers of color together in community, to carve out time and space to focus on their creative work. The program will be held virtually on October 20-24, 2021, and will offer talks, generative exercises, writing sessions, peer-review, with the objective of creating a platform to extend the network for writers of color. Each day, different guests will give craft talks, conduct generative exercises, and provide readings in the evenings. The retreat will also include different writing sessions, and facilitated conversations.

Dates & Fees

The retreat will be held virtually on October 20 -24, 2021.The program costs $800, and several partial fellowships are available every year, depending on funding availability.

Participants must register by the priority deadline to be eligible for fellowships. Our Founding Fellows and returning alumnx will have the opportunity to attend the program at a discounted rate.

Registration is now open! The priority deadline is September 10th, with the final deadline on September 17th (fellowships will be disbursed the week after the deadline). Registration automatically guarantees participation into the program; all fees must be paid prior to the beginning of the retreat.

What to Expect

The program will provide: morning writing session, craft talks, generative exercises, discussion sessions, readings, peer-review sessions, and more.

Speakers

Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Ingrid Rojas Contreras is the author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree (Doubleday, 2018) a silver medal winner in First Fiction from the California Book Awards, and a New York Times editor's choice. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Cut, The Believer, and elsewhere. A new work of non-fiction, a family memoir about her grandfather, a curandero from Colombia who it was said had the power to move clouds, is coming from Doubleday in 2022.

Naomi Jackson

Naomi Jackson is the author of a novel, The Star Side of Bird Hill, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and the International Dublin Literary Award. The Black Caucus of the American Library Association named Jackson’s novel an Honor Book for Fiction. Jackson studied fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She traveled to South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. A graduate of Williams College, Jackson’s writings have appeared in Harper’s, The Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, Poets & Writers, and The Caribbean Writer. She is the recipient of residencies and fellowships from Bread Loaf, MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, the University of Pennsylvania’s Kelly Writers House, Camargo Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Bronx Council on the Arts. Jackson is Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers University-Newark.

Danusha Laméris

Danusha Laméris’ first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award and the winner of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. She was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California, and is currently on the faculty of Pacific University’s low residency MFA program.

Lilliam Rivera

Lilliam Rivera is an award-winning author of the young adult novels Never Look Back, a Pura Belpré Honor winner, Dealing In Dreams, The Education of Margot Sanchez, and the middle grade Goldie Vance series. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, the New York Times, and Elle, to name a few. Her forthcoming works include a young adult science fiction novel, We Light Up the Sky, for Bloomsbury (Oct 5, 2021) and a graphic novel for DC Comics, Unearthed: A Jessica Cruz Story (September 14, 2021). Lilliam lives in Los Angeles.

Kao Kalia Yang

Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong-American writer. She is the author of the memoirs The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, The Song Poet, and Somewhere in the Unknown World. Yang is also the author of the children’s books A Map Into the World, The Shared Room, The Most Beautiful Thing, and Yang Warriors. She co-edited the ground-breaking collection What God is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Native Women and Women of Color. Yang’s work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the PEN USA literary awards, the Dayton’s Literary Peace Prize, as Notable Books by the American Library Association, Kirkus Best Books of the Year, the Heartland Bookseller’s Award, and garnered four Minnesota Book Awards. Kao Kalia Yang lives in Minnesota with her family, and teaches and speaks across the nation.