The Colrain Manuscript Classic is a highly focused, 3.5 day conference designed for poets with manuscripts in progress. The Classic features in-depth pre-conference work and candid, realistic evaluation and feedback from nationally-known poets, editors and publishers. In preparation, participants work at home on pre-conference assignments and then, in the workshop, review, arrange, and winnow their work based on the pre-conference work. In addition to the manuscript preparation workshop and editor sessions, there will be an editorial Q&A, and an after-conference strategy session.
Agenda
Friday: you will receive your Zoom* link via email for our first meeting at 4 pm EST on Friday, June 10. Introductions among participants and faculty take place (bring your own wine!). We’ll talk about backgrounds in poetry, goals and expectations. Faculty will present an overview of the weekend.
Saturday: workshops begin at 11 am EST.
Sunday: editorial sessions begin at 11 am EST. (Pre-conference work will be sent pre-conference.)
Monday: wrap-up session and publication strategies going forward begins at 11 am EST. NOTE: There will be several built-in breaks, including for lunch.
Faculty
Joan Houlihan is the author of six books of poetry, most recently It Isn’t a Ghost if it Lives in Your Chest (Four Way Books). Her other books are: Shadow-feast; The Us, named a “must-read” book of 2009 by Massachusetts Center for the Book and the sequel, Ay (2014); The Mending Worm, winner of the Green Rose Award from New Issues Press and Hand-Held Executions: Poems & Essays. In addition to publishing in a wide array of leading journals, including Poetry, Boston Review, Harvard Review and Gulf Coast, she has served as critic and editor at a series of online magazines, most recently Contemporary Poetry Review. Her critical essays are archived online at bostoncomment.com. Her work has been anthologized in The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (University of Iowa Press) and The Book of Irish-American Poetry–Eighteenth Century to Present (University of Notre Dame Press). She has served as judge for numerous poetry awards and contests including the Louise Bogan Prize for Poetry (Trio House Press), the Jane Kenyon Award for Poetry (New Hampshire Literary Awards), and Massachusetts Center for the Book Award, among others. She has taught at Columbia University, Emerson College and Smith College and serves on the faculty of Lesley University’s Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts and she is also Professor of Practice in Poetry at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Houlihan founded and directs the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference.
Nathan McClain, is the author of two poetry collections: Previously Owned (2022) and Scale (2017) both from Four Way Books, a recipient of fellowships from The Frost Place, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and is graduate of the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson. A Cave Canem fellow, his poems and prose have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Guesthouse, Poetry Northwest, The Critical Flame, Zocalo Public Square, and the Plume Anthology of Poetry 10. He currently teaches at Hampshire College and serves as poetry editor for the Massachusetts Review.
Stephen Motika, poet and publisher, is the author of Western Practice, published by Alice James Books in 2012. He is also the author of two chapbooks, Arrival and at Mono (2007) and In the Madrones (2011), and editor of Tiresias: The Collected Poems of Leland Hickman (2009). His articles and poems have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, At Length, BOMB, The Brooklyn Review, Eleven Eleven, Maggy, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Poets.org, Vanitas
How to Apply
Before you apply, please visit our Conference Criteria page to make certain this conference is right for you. Once you understand the nature and goals of the conference, please submit an application.
Conference Fee
Following successful application, the registration fee is $1,000.00.
