Annual writers' conferences and festivals have become an American tradition. Each summer, conferences like those at Mount Holyoke, Bennington, Sewanee, Iowa City, Bread Loaf, Port Townsend, and a host of others bring together established writers and students of exceptional talent for brief periods of tutoring and nurturing. The teaching faculty is composed of distinguished poets, fiction writers, and writers of nonfiction prose who have gained a wide readership. Their students are generally promising beginners and emerging professionals.
Some senior writers were themselves discovered at writers' conferences, festivals, and workshops—Rick Bass, Pam Houston, Lisa Shea, Amy Tan, and other now-familiar writers. Some of the new voices in this anthology have been widely published in such prestigious magazines as the New Yorker, Poetry, Paris Review, Southern Review, and Story. With selections from both teachers and students, The Writing Path 2 brings together another group of seasoned and fresh writers for readers to savor.
“Pairing teachers' and writers-conference-attendees' work for this volume was an interesting idea, and don't let it lead you to expect the student contributions to be any less riveting than the teachers' pieces…What these stories and poems share—instructors' and students' alike—is what always makes stories and poems work best: the telling detail and emotion shown, not told.”—Bookworm
