ZYZZYVA: Writers & Editors Workshop

The whole idea of looking to masters instead of overturning something is very Chinese. On some level, Ha Jin has chosen mastery over genius. It’s as if he said, “I am going to make something like that.” This never happens with American writers. We are too beset with the anxiety of influence. What he’s doing is very challenging, and I am interested to see how the American literati pick it up and deal with it.

in which we will not pay any attention to your own fiction, but will invite you to apprentice yourself, in the medieval manner, to the work of certain masters. We will focus on their craft, on reading them to extract elements of style and tricks of the trade. You will do imitations, replays, emulations, parodies, extensions. Your own work will eventually benefit, we hope, because, for a moment, you had set your path in the footsteps of greatness.

Nicholas Delbanco is the Robert Frost Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, and the author of 18 books, including The Lost Suitcase: Reflections on the Literary Life, which was published this winter by Columbia University Press; The Writers’ Trade, and Other Stories; the novels Old Scores and In The Name of Mercy; and a biographical study of writers in community, Group Portrait: Conrad, Crane, Ford, James and Wells. He was born in London, did his undergraduate work at Harvard, and earned his Ph.D. at Columbia. He has taught at Bennington, where he founded the Writing Workshops in 1977, and at Skidmore, Williams, Trinity, Columbia, Iowa, and Breadloaf.

David Hamilton Amherst ’61, has edited The Iowa Review for over 20 years. His own articles and reviews have appeared in the Connecticut, Gettysburg, Missouri, and River Oak Reviews; the Michigan Quarterly Review and North Dakota Quarterly; Creative Nonfiction, The American Voice, Harvard Magazine, Verse, Country Journal, Poetry Northwest, The Huntington Library Bulletin, College English, and Anglo-Saxon England. He is co-editor of Fields of Reading: Motives for Writing (St. Martins), now going into its sixth edition. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Virginia, He has taught in Barranquilla, Colombia; Valencia, Spain; and at the University of Michigan. He is now a professor of English at the University of Iowa.

Howard Junker Amherst ’61, is the founding editor of ZYZZYVA, now celebrating its 15th anniversary. He has edited four anthologies of material taken from its pages, most recently Lucky Break: How I Became a Writer (Heinemann). His reviews, interviews, and articles have appeared in Art in America, Esquire, The Nation, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Vogue, and other major magazines. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and daughter.

Peter Stine Amherst ’63, is the founding editor of Witness, now in its 13th year. He is the editor of the anthologies The Sixties (1996), Sports in America (1995), and On Nature's Terms (1992). His fiction, essays, and journalism have appeared in Boulevard, Modern Critical Views, the New York Times, and The Threepenny Review. He earned his Ph.D. at Berkeley.

About the Golden Gate Club in the Presidio of San Francisco
The Golden Gate Club is in a Spanish Colonial Revival-style building, near the Presidio's Main Post, just below the post chapel, and next to a 19th-century cemetery. Since its founding in 1776, the Presidio has guarded San Francisco Bay under three flags and is now preserved as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Each workshop is limited to 12 members. Requests for a specific instructor will be honored on a first-come, first-served basis. A check for the full amount must be received before your acceptance is confirmed. Cancellations received prior to April 1 will be subject to a $100 charge. No refunds after April 1, unless a waiting-list replacement is available. An anthology of material for workshop analysis and inspiration will be sent you on or about April 15.

7:30 p.m.—David Hamilton gives a talk, "'Going There': Frost, Ashbery, and the Information Age," at the Mechanics' Institute, 57 Post St. Friday, May 5 (attendance optional)

6 p.m.—Editor's panel with David Hamilton, Howard Junker, Peter Stine; moderated by Steve Arkin, professor of literature, SF State; at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, 601 Van Ness

I have carried with me for some time--and it is all the more attractive because unclear -- the notion of writers as artisans, of artists engaged in a guild. The model is that of the medieval guild, with its compelling triad of apprentice, then journeyman laborer, then master craftsman -- this last attained after a lifetime's study and practice of the craft. That writing is a craft as well as an art, that one must learn to dado the paragraph's joints, as it were, and learn how to prime the scene's canvas -- this is something we take increasingly for granted.

Time after time flattery of imitation will alter and enlarge to emulation; then emulation in its turn becomes originality. We copy and borrow (a descant here, a harmony there) until our own voice issues as a collective intonation and (if we are fortunate) chorale.

The right older writer confers upon the enterprise of writing a more powerful and refined version of your way of feeling, your sense of truth. His durable presence instills within you a hopefulness that you can somehow, someday, embody -- not imitate but embody -- the same felt values that this higher kindred spirit does. By being there, if only in your imagination, he prevents you from being an orphan as a writer -- merely your parents' son, on the one hand, and your dubiously sensitive inner side, on the other. From this influence can come the beginnings of a style, because as you fall under the spell of the writer, you try to make the bonds a little tighter and more intimate by being adopted, as it were, by his voice. But the durable influence, I believe, is from the kindred but refined attitudes and values behind the voice, which center and inspire you by evoking the new but "persistent sameness of self." It's not so very different from finding a best friend or a good psychotherapist who brings out and confirms your better nature, who prompts your calmest, most personal, most truthful voice. It's also not so very different from prayer.

I copied out well-known poems, leaving space between each line where I wrote my own version or response.... I wrote lines without verbs. I wrote only using slang. Until suddenly a word seemed to become itself and a quick clarity penetrated.

Back to ZYZZYVA home