Saturday, June 29, 2013  and  Saturday, July 13, 2013

1:00pm to 4:00pm PST

LINES & LETTERS: A Poetry Workshop with a Postal Platform We’ll be exploring how letter writing can catalyze new poems, and fresh ways of observing the world around us, and kick-starting ways of creating new poems. – How does your writing change if you have to address a particular person in your life? – How does your identity change as you address different people? – How can our daily observations turn into poetry? We’ll also look at the work of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell (about 25% of workshop time) and how their 30 year correspondence influenced their writing.

Our workshop will provide a unique opportunity to work with other poets from the class and try out real-life letter-writing partnerships.

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This workshop is running in conjunction with Berkeley Rep’s play Dear Elizabeth, Sarah Ruhl’s play based on the correspondence between Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. Workshop open to poets of all ages. Dates: Saturday 29 June   and   Saturday 13 July —   1:00-4:00pm both days $86 covers both sessions plus a half-priced ticket to the play Dear Elizabeth. **********************************************************

WORKSHOP LEADER: Pireeni Sundaralingam was educated at Oxford and has held fellowships from PEN USA (in poetry) and the Berlin Arts Academy (in interdisciplinary thinking). She is co-editor of Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry, which won both the PEN Oakland and the N. California Book Award in 2011. Her own poetry has been published in journals such as Ploughshares (USA), Cyphers (Ireland) and Karavan (Sweden), anthologies by W.W.Norton, Prentice Hall and Macmillan, and translated into five languages. She was recently selected for the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Individual Artist Commission (2013/14), and is an Associate Professor in the Writing & Consciousness MFA program at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Berkeley Rep School of Theatre 2071 Addison St, Berkeley, California 94704

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I had a chance to chat with Pireeni Sundaralingam last year when Kim McMillon pitched us to “Bay Sunday” producer Akilah Bolden-Monifa and subsequently “Bay Sunday” host Frank Mallicoat (3 time Emmy Award journalist) interviewed Pireeni Sundaralingam, Joan Gelfand, Ishmael Reed, and yours truly Teresa LeYung-Ryan.

Cheers to Pireeni and everyone  who will be in her workshops!

Sincerely,

Coach Teresa LeYung-Ryan

author of:

Build Your Writer’s Platform & Fanbase In 22 Days: Attract Agents, Editors, Publishers, Readers, and Media Attention NOW (the workbook)

Love Made of Heart (the mother-daughter novel used in college composition classes; book is archived at the San Francisco History Center)

Answer Me Now  (the award-winning short play)

and speeches advocating mental health and end violence against women and children

Click here for a list of Coach Teresa’s event.

http://writingcoachTeresa.com  for more resources.

Coach Teresa says: “Wear the dual hats of writer and promoter. Reach out, not stress out.”