Where Were You When the Earthquake hit?

I was sitting in my office working on lesson plans when I felt the walls shake. Someone down the hall screamed. I didn't understand what they were saying, but I understood the combination of a shaking building and panic. I ran out of my office barefoot. All I grabbed was my novel manuscript.

Where were you during the earthquake? What would you grab in an emergency?

Big News!

I'm very pleased to announce that author Laura van den Berg has joined the Hampden Writers' Workshop!

Laura van den Berg’s debut collection of stories, “What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us,” was a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection, longlisted for The Story Prize, and shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Award. Laura has taught writing in a wide range of settings, including Emerson College, Gettysburg College, Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, the Gilman School, and PEN/New England’s Freedom-to-Write program. She lives in Baltimore, where she is revising a novel and working on a second collection of stories. To learn more about Laura and her work, please visit www.lauravandenberg.com.


The Hampden Writers' Workshop will begin offering six week classes and  one day seminars beginning September 2011.  

Publications from The HWW

Hampden Writers' Workshop instructor Khaliah Williams' story, Until the Heart Stops Beating in the current issue of the Hawaii Women's Journal...now!


You can read it <a href="http://www.hawaiiwomensjournal.com">here</a>

It's in the Desk

Sometimes I sit in front of my computer just thinking about writing. This, infuriates me. It feels like wasted time, though somewhere in that mass of matter science calls a brain, I know that it’s not, in fact, wasted time. In Iowa, I wasted time. Mostly because of the in-s and un-s: insecurity, uncertainty and unrequited love. Those are things I am good at. And with one phone call on a February afternoon, I’m supposed to be good at writing too. Since I moved to Baltimore, I don’t write as often as I did in Iowa. Life here moves differently, I move differently. The in-s and un-s are still there but they mean different, more urgent things. I still teach for a living but not in the same way I taught in Iowa. That is, I take it seriously but when I speak to my students it feels different. When I stand in front of a room full of ninth graders I become painfully aware that I’m laying down the foundation for what we tell them will be a life of learning. I’m teaching them about comma splices, verbal phrases, and the past participle. Things I had to re-learn over the summer and still, I feel uncomfortable with them. In Iowa, I taught ideas more than anything. I offered my version of “What fiction was,” that is, I told them what my fiction was as though it was the standard and they believed me. Took notes even, as though they were going to be a test later. There never was. But teaching about writing made me want to write more. As if I had something to prove to my students. I suppose I did.

In my apartment in Iowa City, there was more of an affectation to my writing time. I spent an hour preparing breakfast, turkey bacon, two hard boiled eggs, and a homemade latte if I was feeling healthy. I watched podcasts of the previous night’s Rachel Maddow because, of course, I didn’t have a television. When that was done, I sat down at my desk my dingy white macbook in front of me and what was left of my coffee to my right. When I first came to look at the apartment, I fell in love almost immediately. I can write in this space I thought. I can finish here. There was a little open sun porch, just enough room for a desk and a bookshelf. When I moved in I put the desk underneath two windows that looked out onto a little grassy hill where my neighbors often sat sunning themselves when the weather was nice. I lined up my favorite novels and the collection of How-to books on writing and achieving inner peace so I could have easy access to them as I wrote. I even put en empty vase on the left corner of the desk in case someone bought me flowers or I felt the urge to buy some for myself. I received flowers twice, on my 29^th birthday from my parents and then again from James Alan McPherson on the occasion of my Grandfather’s death. I never put the flowers in a vase. I liked to sit at that desk and drink coffee, smoke forbidden cigarettes and eat red berries when I felt rich, which was only once a month and always in the first week when paychecks arrived. I even placed the framed photograph of Tina Fey from the writer’s strike in the space just behind my computer. I’m still not sure why.

In Baltimore, I write in coffee shops, usually one in particular, on The Avenue in Hampden where I live. They make a good latte and it’s usually quiet, although today, as I write this, it is unusually noisy. But it’s not working quite like that desk did. For some reason, without it I feel less like a writer and more like a teacher. Not that this is a bad thing. It just is. I loved sitting behind that wooden desk handed down to me from another workshopper. When I left, I did the same. Perhaps that’s the missing link to writing in Baltimore. The desk is still in Iowa.

Look for us in the Fall of 2011

Dear Writers,
Outside obligations and a desire to make this project the best it can possibly be, means we'll be postponing the start of classes until the fall. We promise we'll be back with a few new writers on board to ensure that all future students' needs. This means we will be able to offer classes on function writing, publishing, and applying to MFA programs.

Stay tuned. Big things are happening in Hampden.

Khaliah and Company

Why We're Excited?

Because days when books arrive are the best days!

In the mail today (along with a sweet Valentine) was: The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale. Read the New York Times review and then go Buy the book!

Along with it was, Where the God of Love Hangs Out By Amy Bloom, another Workshop favorite.

But mostly we're excited about fearless writing. Last' night, we sunk our teeth into Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres sometime around 8:30PM. I'd like to say we let go around 3AM when we finished the book, but the truth is that book sunk its teeth into us and left bite marks. Books like that don't let you go very easily. There were a lot of "Oh my god"s and "What the F. Scott?"s
It's a good read people. From start to finish. We recommend it.


The missed sleep was, well, missed, but a that's nothing four shots of espress from Hampden's own