Author Doug Crandell, Editor Nancy Brooks Lane, Art Historian Dr. Perry Brooks

Doug Crandell is the author of Pig Boy's Wicked Bird: A Memoir, which has been selected as a Quality Paperback Book Club pick; The All-American Industrial Motel: A Memoir; and his debut novel The Flawless Skin of Ugly People. His short stories and essays have appeared in The SUN, Smithsonian Magazine, Indiana Review, Nebraska Review, Hawaii Review, and in other journals and magazines. A regular contributor to the highly acclaimed magazine, Glimmer Train, five of his short stories have or will appear there. Doug has taught at the Georgia Writers Association and the Midwest Writers Workshop, and has read his work at North Carolina Writer's Network. He was also a featured author at the Midwest Literary Festival in Chicago. In 2005, Doug received the Goldfarb Fellowship at the VCCA.

Start living a literary lifestyle in the south of France! There are secrets to landing an agent, signing a contract and publishing your novel. Without a aupport network, real passion and a mentor, the best-laid plans can lose momentum. The key is leading a literary lifestyle, and what better locale could there be to start living it than in the south of France?

Workshops are finite; they begin and end, and the event is over. While this workshop will be intensive and offer writers the opportunity to study with a novelist and his editor for a week, that's just the start. The week spent in bucolic Auvillar will become the foundation for a long-term partnership between the author with each participant. The leaders will use e-mail, phone conferences and interactive editing to offer on-going, long-term support. While in France, each writer will have the chance to gain customized mentoring, which will be tailored by the writers themselves. Writers of all levels are encouraged to apply. While mornings will be dedicated to more structured writing processes, the afternoons and evenings will consist of readings, fine dining and leisurely conversations about living the literary lifestyle successfully.

Includes: All instruction, all housing (double occupancy), all breakfasts and lunches, four dinners, pick up and drop off at transportation centers in Toulouse or Agen. Single occupancy requires a $200 supplement.

Janet Fitch is the author of "Paint It Black" and "White Oleander," an Oprah Book Club selection. Fitch's short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and she currently teaches advanced fiction writing in the Master of Professional Writing program at the University of Southern California, and at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

Bruce Bauman, a professor in the CalArts MFA writing program since 2002, has taught courses in the novel, short story, narrative and popular criticism. (Many of his students have gone on to publish successfully.) He is the author of the novel And The Word Was, which Booklist called "a magnificent debut, smart and intense..." His work has appeared in Salon, BOMB, Bookforum, The LA Weekly and numerous literary magazines and anthologies. He is a senior editor of the award-winning Black Clock magazine. Bruce is working on his new novel, Broken Sleep.

As a writer there can be nothing scarier or more filled with possibility than blank pieces of paper, except a manuscript page with a jumble of ideas that needs to be transformed into a cohesive, seamless story. Our workshop is aimed toward tackling these problems. Bruce Bauman will conduct morning group sessions with exercises, free-writing, lectures and short readings directed at solving these problems. Each student will meet with Janet Fitch separately in a one on one conference on one afternoon to discuss his or her submitted manuscript pages and address the specific tools of fiction writing needed to take the work to the next level.  

It is our belief that every writer possesses his or her own creative DNA--the unique amalgam of experience, perception and voice, which no one can utilize but you. It is our goal to help you discover and refine your own personal paint box of tools, talents and concerns, preparing you to write stories that will engage both you as a writer, and your reader.

Includes: All instruction, all housing (double occupancy), all breakfasts and lunches, four dinners, pick up and drop off at transportation centers in Toulouse or Agen. Single occupancy requires a $200 supplement.

How is one's literature culturally bound? How are North American literatures different from European? The focus of the week's workshop will be difference, as we examine what we write as well as some of the important poems of major European poets. For example, how might you complete a poem--by the great French poet Henri Michaux--that begins, "When you walk in the country..."? How might you complete this poem after spending five days roaming Auvillar and its surroundings? Participants in the workshop will be asked to write and wander each morning, to join a group critique session most afternoons, and to read a few assigned European poems in translation (to attend three or four talks by the instructor). Individual manuscript consultation with the instructor will also be available.

In the week's forays, our inquiries will be creative: we will attempt to answer our various questions by reading and writing poems. The two main goals of the week's work will be to understand from inside a poem what it means to write one's own cultural experience, and to develop a broader knowledge of major European poets of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Includes: All instruction, all housing (double occupancy), all breakfasts and lunches, four dinners, pick up and drop off at transportation centers in Toulouse or Agen. Single occupancy requires a $200 supplement.

Elizabeth Seydel Morgan was the 2007 Writer in Residence at Hollins University. She has published four books of poetry with LSU Press, 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.

Artist 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.

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.

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 participants can compete 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.

Includes: All instruction, all housing (double occupancy), all breakfasts and lunches, four dinners, pick up and drop off at transportation centers in Toulouse or Agen. Single occupancy requires a $200 supplement.