Welcome
RED WHEELBARROW WRITERS
The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
At Red Wheelbarrow Writers we believe that so much depends upon community: creating community, while building skills and fostering opportunity. We offer an eclectic array of workshops for writers in all genres: fiction, (novels and short stories) creative non-fiction, essays, YA, memoir, self-help, and the occasional poet. Our workshops address the craft and art of writing, as well as the more mundane (but just as vexing) aspects of publishing in the 21st century.
At Red Wheelbarrow writers come together to learn from professionals. Workshops typically run for two months. In the initial meeting writers bring their questions, their dilemmas, to be discussed in a supportive and genial atmosphere. They take home materials with tactics and strategies designed to enhance their writing process. The following month we reconvene to discuss the work created and to further understanding.
Red Wheelbarrow began in the summer of 2010, spurred by the needs of two writers, Cami Ostman and Susan Tive. They had taken classes offered locally, and met with informal groups of writers, but they felt the need to reach beyond these venues and connect with a larger circle of people—who were also singularly writing away in studies, coffee shops, or libraries. Laura Kalpakian joined them in their first offering, and the overwhelming response prompted the three to move forward in 2011 and create Red Wheelbarrow Writers Series.
We’re located in Bellingham, Washington on the north Puget Sound. We act locally, but we believe globally in developing dialogue with readers and writers everywhere. We look forward to meeting you.
The Chicks:
Susan Tive
A recovering ghostwriter, Susan Tive is letting her own voice do the talking in her nearly completed memoir Woman of Valor, the occasionally humorous tale of a twenty something wife and mother who chucks her fashionable freedoms and blue jeans to become an Orthodox Jew. Hopeful that the archaic laws of her ancestors can save her marriage, Susan chafes against the mundane rules as she searches to find herself as a wife, a Jew and a woman. Strength and support come from unexpected people and places as Susan learns that sometimes breaking the rules is the only way to truly follow them.
As a writer, editor and researcher for over fourteen years, Susan has worked on a variety of academic articles exploring psychology, feminism and religion. Susan’s interest in these subjects led her to become an editor for several non-fiction titles including Faith and Feminism and Rachel’s Bag. Her apparition-like involvement in these projects inspired the unearthing of her own stories, collected in boxes of journals and diaries dating back to elementary school days.
Broadening her writing skills still further and determined to make a living as some kind of writer Susan works as a grant writer and development consultant. She has raised over two million dollars for non-profit organizations in three states and changed the arts landscape of her current hometown, Bellingham, Washington, a place she loves but would prefer to live in only during the growing season. With her husband, Michael, their five chickens and soon to be added hive of bees, she is learning to brave the NW weather and play in her garden, delighting in its fruits, no longer forbidden in her life.
Laura Kalpakian
Laura Kalpakian wrote her first novel at the age of twelve. The novel took place during the French Revolution and the fact that she had never been to France, did not speak French, and could not type did not deter her ambition, but certainly thwarted her process. She dropped the project when it occurred to her that these characters had to eat as well as travel, talk and wear a lot of difficult clothing. These pages have long since composted somewhere in Southern California and enriched the earth.
A long time passed before Laura tried to write fiction again. She never did learn to type well, but in the meantime she pounded out a Master’s Thesis and an undergraduate thesis, both in history, 18thcentury. A native Californian, she got her undergraduate degree close to home (University California, Riverside) and her graduate degree as far away as possible (University of Delaware). She spent about five years on the East Coast, teaching and traveling before deciding that she was truly a west coast person, and returned to California, to a beach town she called home for a long time.
There she began writing fiction stories for a long time before wading into a novel. Beggars and Choosers, (Little, Brown) was her first work in print. She did not choose the title. Nine other novels have followed, some with overlapping characters and settings (the fictional St. Elmo, California, and the fictional Isadora Island, Washington). Most recently, American Cookery (St. Martin’s Press) was one of 137 novels worldwide nominated for the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
In addition to her novels, Laura continues to enjoy writing in the short forms, and has published nearly a hundred stories and memoir essays, both in the US and the UK, including three prize-winning collections of short fiction. In 1990 Laura won a National Endowment for the Arts award, and two years later published Graced Land (Grove), the story of an overzealous Elvis fan and an unsophisticated social worker.
Laura Kalpakian enjoys working with other writers, helping them bring their projects to fruition, both in classes and with independent editing. She began sharing her professional knowledge with students at Western Washington University in 1984. She taught there for five years, moving on to the University of Washington where she was Theodore Roethke Writer in Residence. In 2007 she taught the first Fiction and Memoir three-term programs for WWU’s Extended Education. She has participated in many writers’ conferences and residencies nationwide distilling her literary experiences into materials for her courses and developing unique classes linking music and writing.
Cami Ostman
Cami Ostman is (among other things) a runner, dog- lover, family therapist, former high school English teacher, avid reader, theater goer, traveler and wine connoisseur.
As a child, Cami wrote stories and poems (usually angsty, unrhyming prose full of references to tears and darkness), but as a college student she turned out to be a rather terrific essayist and a clear communicator. Later, in nearly every job she tried (and they were numerous), her favorite task was writing: grants, psychotherapy notes, comments on students’ papers, even emails.
Her first book, Second Wind: One Woman’s Midlife Quest to Run Seven Marathons on Seven Continents was published by Seal Press in November, 2010. As a writer, Cami spends a hundred hours every month at Starbucks drinking double-short-one-pump-of-sugar-free-cinnamon-dolce-soy-lattes with earphones in her ears pretending to listen to music so that others will not strike up conversations with her.
She is the author of the blog 7marathons7continents.com and a weekly contributor to The Spirited Woman blogger team. She has been featured in O Magazine, Adventures Northwest, Fitness Magazine, The Mudgee Guardian (Australia), and La Prensa (Chile).
Cami has a passion for building community and supporting other writers who want to express their truths, their humor, their imaginations or share their information. She lives in Bellingham with two dogs, one cat, one lizard and one man, her husband, Bill.