Special Events

Twin Farms Writers Retreat
Barnard, Vermont
Nov. 5 – 9, 2008

Do you have a story you’ve always wanted to tell? Have you longed to share your adventures and accomplishments, your family’s story or a fictional account that’s been unfolding in your imagination for years? Join other new and developing writers this autumn at the Twin Farms Writers Retreat where some of the nation’s best authors will offer writing lessons and provide personal coaching to evolving writers in the former home of Noble Prize-winning novelist Sinclair Lewis and Journalist Dorothy Thompson.

Vermont’s literary history began long before Sinclair Lewis bought the lovely, expansive farmhouse and its surrounding pastures and hills located about thirty miles from Woodstock, Vermont, as a wedding present for Thompson, the role model for Katharine Hepburn’s character Tess Harding in the 1942 film Woman of the Year. Throughout history, Vermont has attracted dozens of literary greats - from Rudyard Kipling, Pearl Buck and Robert Frost to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Grace Paley, Chris Bohjalian and Jamaica Kincaid. Today as then, writers are drawn to Vermont to create stories, essays and poems in the Green Mountain’s restorative environment. Here the pace of life allows creativity to flourish.

About Twin Farms: Vermont’s only five-star resort is located on three hundred acres of rolling knolls that come ablaze in autumn glory. The property is crisscrossed with meandering trails and a pond. Accommodations are conducive to comfort and imagination ranging from elegant, finely appointed rooms in the Main House and Suites in the Farmhouse or to ten private, intimate cottages where you can snuggle up by the fire with your journal for an afternoon of inspired writing.

Classes and talks will be offered in the main house, complete with a library outfitted with everything from Grisham to Trollope, a vault filled with great movies and a $6 million art collection, including paintings by Milton Avery and Roy Lichtenstein. Writing games and cocktails will be offered in the late afternoon
before a world-class dinner and a reading by one of our published authors. Our sessions will begin in the latter part of the afternoon on Wednesday, November 5 and conclude after breakfast on November 9.

At the Twin Farms Writers Retreat this fall, you’ll have your choice of writing classes and specialized instructions with the following writers:

Yvonne Daley, the director of the Twin Farms Writers Retreat has published more than 4000 works of fiction and non-fiction and two books, Vermont Writers: A State of Mind and An Independent Man. She writes for The Boston Globe, Time, Life, Tendril Literary Magazine, Dark Horse and a host of other national and regional publications. A professor at San Francisco State University, she also directs the prestigious Green Mountain Writers Conference. Her next book, Octavia Boulevard: A Neighborhood Memoir, will be published in 2009. Her specialties are memoir, fiction, magazine and travel writing.

Chuck Clarino, the assistant director of Twin Farms Writers Retreat, is a journalist, fiction writer and essayist who writes about sports, nature and the environment as well as personal narrative. A winner of the competitive New Millennium Writing contest, Mr. Clarino’s work appears regularly in regional and
national sporting and outdoor magazines. He'll lead a trek through the property and instruct retreat participants in ways to write about the natural world.

David Huddle is the author of five collections of short fiction including Stories of Men and Women, Intimates and Not a Trio; five collections of poetry, including Paper Boy, Summer Lake and Glory Days, which will be published in April 2008; two novels, The story of a Million Years and LaTour Dreams the Wolf Girl; and a novella, Tenorman. His collected essays on writing, The Writing Habit, is considered among the most useful and inspirational books on the art and craft of writing. His fiction, essays and poetry have appeared in Esquire, Harper’s Magazine and the Best American Short Stories. Huddle teaches writing at the University of Vermont and Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English. Although he is proficient in writing across the genres, Huddle will work primarily in fiction at the Twin Farms autumn retreat.

Peter Kurth has written extensively about European royalty and is considered the premier biographer of Dorothy Thompson. His first book, the international bestseller Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson, was made into an NBC miniseries. His biography of Thompson, American Cassandra, was followed by
Tsar: The Lost World of Nicholas and Alexandra, Zelda: The Private World of Zelda Fitzgerald (co-written with Eleanor Lanahan) and Isadora: A Sensational Life. He writes for Salon.com, Seven Days, Cosmopolitan, Conde Nast Traveler and other publications. Kurth’s specialties include biography, essay writing and
satire.

Verandah Porche is a poet, songwriter and singer whose collections include The Body’s Symmetry and Glancing Off, along with a host of community and collaborative publications in which she has helped others tell their story in poetry and narrative. The Vermont Arts Council in 1998 awarded Porche a Citation of Merit for her contributions to the state’s cultural life. Porche will direct participants in afternoon word games and coach individual poets during the Twin Farms Retreat.