The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), is one of the foremost international working retreats for writers, visual artists and composers located in the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, providing meals, rooms and studios to selected professional artists from around the world. The VCCA hosts about 350 "Fellows" each year (25 at any one time) at its Mt. San Angelo estate adjacent to Sweet Briar College. In this bucolic setting, the VCCA provides residential fellowships of two weeks to two months where artists may work free from the distractions and responsibilities of daily life.

Over its 37-year history, the VCCA has served more than 4,000 visual artists, writers, composers and other genre individuals, adding in immeasurable quantity and quality to the literature, visual arts and musical resources available to all the world's citizens. Fellows have received major awards including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Grammy Award and Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships. Fellows have included social commentator and best-selling author of The Beauty Myth Naomi Wolf; novelist Gregory Maguire, whose novel Wicked became a record-breaking, smash-hit Broadway play; and Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Del Tredici. Fellows come to the VCCA from every U.S. state and more than 50 countries.

Admission to the VCCA is highly selective, based on a review of applications by panels of professional artists in each discipline. The basis for admission by an application is professional achievement or promise of achievement.  To apply, artists submit an application form, curriculum vitae and samples of their work. Deadlines: January 15 for residencies between June and September; May 15 for residencies between October and January; and September 15 for residencies between February and May.

WRITING WORKSHOP: REVIVING THE SENSES IN DEEP FRANCE

This is a poetry workshop centered in the delicious, fragrant experience of being in "Deep France" (Auvillar).  We will let the poems explore and reawaken our senses as we walk, dream, sip our wine, taste our fresh foods from the open air markets-- "Oh Taste and See," poet Denise Levertov wrote, "meaning all that lives / to the imagination's tongue." We will let ourselves be inspired by the intense colors and friendly villagers of Auvillar. We aim to have our poetic language awaken others as they read about our journey. This workshop is for master poets and for any and all of those who aspire to be better writers, to take their work to the next level. Publication resources will be provided at the close of the workshop.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:
MARILYN KALLET is the author of 14 books, including CIRCE, AFTER HOURS, poetry from BkMk Press, LAST LOVE POEMS OF PAUL ELUARD, translations from Black Widow Press, and JACK THE HEALING CAT, a children's book from Tellico Press. She is co-editor of THE MOVABLE NEST: A MOTHER/DAUGHTER COMPANION, with North Carolina Poet Laureate  Kathryn Stripling Byer.   In 2005, she was inducted into the East Tennessee Literary Hall of Fame in poetry. Dr. Kallet directed the creative writing program at the University of Tennessee for 17 years, and now holds a Lindsay Young Professorship in English. Her new collection- PACKING LIGHT: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS will be out from Black iWidow Press in 2009.


EN PLEIN AIR: WRITING AND PAINTING IN SOUTHWEST FRANCE
 
This combination workshop will give participants the opportunity to work with a palette of words and colors. Designed to meet the needs of professional artists and writers, it will also allow those with general interest and ability to pursue their creative vision.

The writers will meet with writer Elizabeth Seydel Morgan around a picnic table on the grassy bank of the Garonne River, or under a vine-covered shelter overlooking the fig trees, or at a terrace table in the afternoon at the Hotel de l''Horloge avec un petit vin, where they will practice putting observation into words. Every genre of creative writer can use this kind of communal and individual practice. Individual conferences for critique of work can be arranged.

"Painting from nature is not copying the object but realizing one sensation." Paul Cezanne

Mary Page Evans will lead the painting portion of the workshop.Working in sketchbooks, the visual artists will paint and draw "en plein air" with painter Mary Page Evans on the streets of Auvillar and in the beautiful countryside surrounding the village. Broad views of the surrounding area or intimate views of small gardens offer some of the many subjects for the painters. A sketchbook/journal will sum up a week of creative collaboration between painting and writing. At the end of the week is the optional participation in "Paint My Village," the annual painting contest sponsored by this village.

Workshop participants will finish the week with a sketch book of visual and written images of Auvillar. Classes will be scheduled so that participants in one genre can take or visit the other workshop.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTORS:
MARY PAGE EVANS painted in Monet's gardens Giverny for several summers. She exhibits her work at Carspecken Scott Gallery in Wilmington, Delaware and Addison Ripley Fine Arts in Washington, D.C. Her work is in many public and private collections including the Delaware Art Museum, State Museum of Pennsylvania and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and most recently the American Embassy in Nepal.

Most recently the 2007 Writer in Residence at Hollins University, ELIZABETH SEYDEL MORGAN has published four books of poetry with LSU Press (all in print), two award-winning short stories, received Best Screenplay Award from the Virginia Film Festival, translated Euripides' Electra for Penn Press, and published non-fiction essays. Many poets and editors are among her past students, including the editor of Poetry.