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| Contact: | Mikhail Iossel |
| Address: | 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West, English Department, LB 683.03, Montreal, QC, H3G 1M8 CANADA |
| Phone: | 514-848-2424 5210 |
| E-mail: | iosselm@gmail.com |
| Website: | http://www.sumlitsem.org/ |
| Dates: | December, June, August |
| Application Deadline: | November 15, April 30, June 15 |
| Tuition/Cost: | $1950US |
| Scholarships: | Several |
| Genres: | Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, Playwriting, Screenwriting, Children's Literature |
| Faculty/ Presenters: | The faculties are comprised of innovative and accomplished writers from Europe, Africa, and North America, and have included American Poet Laureates and Canadian Governor General Award winners, among other meritorious accolades. Past faculty has included: George Saunders, Robert Creeley, Padgett Powell, Robert Coover, Denis Johnson, Jayne Anne Phillips, Francine Prose, Binyavanga Wainaina, Jason Camlot, Noah Richler, Jon Paul Fiorentino, Erin Moure, Billy Collins, Lynne Tillman, Robert Hass, C.K. Williams, Phillip Lopate, Wayne Johnston, Mac Wellman, William Vollmann, William Meredith, Matthew Zapruder, Jonathan Ames, Kim Addonizio, Jim Shepard, Gary Shteyngart, Sam Lipsyte, Chris Sorrentino, Stephanie Bolster, George Elliot Clarke, Dave Eggers and M.G. Vassanji, and many others. |
| Description: | Brief History: Summer Literary Seminars International was founded in 1999 by Mikhail Iossel. The first program was held in St. Petersburg, Russia. For the next decade SLS prided itself on bringing together the finest American, Canadian, European, and African writers and literary scholars with their Russian counterparts for two-weeks of writing related activities. In 2001 SLS launched its sister program, SLS Kenya. In 2005 the first large scale program featured a dozen faculty members and nearly fifty North American and African participants. The program uses the capitol of Nairobi and the medieval stone town of Lamu as primary locations. In 2009 SLS visited Lithuania for the first time, running a successful program in Vilnius for over 80 participants. Since 2004 SLS has based its operations out of Montreal. As a result the organization has become distinctly Canadian, as a large component of the faculty, staff, and participants are Canadian writers. Role within the Arts and Literary Community: Summer Literary Seminars International hosts creative writing programs for writers of all experience and accomplishment. By providing a venue and valuable resources to emerging writers, Summer Literary Seminars International aims to cultivate a more informed and experienced literary community. The knowledge and experience that our participants take home with them enriches at once the writer, the region they've experienced, and the community to which they've returned. This is particularly important within our mandate of providing emerging and established Canadian writers with new resources with which to invigorate their writing and writing careers. A unique aspect of SLS is indeed the Canadian content. Not only do Canadian participants consist of up to 50% of the program, but our emphasis on including Canadian writers and our relationship with Canadian writing programs is unparalleled in other writing based seminars. The SLS faculties also rely heavily on the inclusion of Canadian writers, editors, agents and academics. This greatly increases the international awareness of Canadian writing, as well as enhancing the skill and quality of Canadian writers, both established and emerging. SLS is premised on the not-so-novel idea that one's writing can greatly benefit from the keen sense of temporary displacement created by an immersion in a thoroughly foreign culture and street vernacular; that one's removing himself/herself from the routine context of his/her life, of one's own free will, tends to provide for a creative jolt by offering up a wholly new perspective, new angle of looking at the customary and the mundane. SLS was created with the mandate to enrich the international writing community by way of bringing together writers of every level from all over the world to share common and unique experiences in order to foster an appreciation for each other's work. SLS works to provide invaluable and practical resources to at once invigorate the skills and professionalism of writers. The goal of SLS is to be an integral part of the international writing community, as well as conduit for international cooperation between writing communities. SLS sees itself at the centre of a globalizing writing community, a place both literal and figurative for all writers to come together to advance their writing, cultures, and lives, and to benefit their readership and that of the general public. SLS aims to host writing programs in unique and cultural diverse regions, in addition to St. Petersburg, Russia, and Nairobi and Lamu, Kenya. By expanding the breadth of its programs and venturing into new regions, Summer Literary Seminars International remains a unique international cultural experience, and one that reinforces and reinvigorates the international writing community. As a Canadian entity, SLS serves to introduce Canadian writers to a varied international writing community, as well has develop and assist the emergence of aspiring Canadian writers. Summer Literary Seminars International remains the only writing initiative of its kind in the world, and as such truly one of its most important. The faculties are comprised of innovative and accomplished writers from Europe, Africa, and North America, and have included American Poet Laureates and Canadian Governor General Award winners, among other meritorious accolades. Past faculty has included: George Saunders, Robert Creeley, Padgett Powell, Robert Coover, Denis Johnson, Jayne Anne Phillips, Francine Prose, Binyavanga Wainaina, Jason Camlot, Noah Richler, Jon Paul Fiorentino, Erin Moure, Billy Collins, Lynne Tillman, Robert Hass, C.K. Williams, Phillip Lopate, Wayne Johnston, Mac Wellman, William Vollmann, William Meredith, Matthew Zapruder, Jonathan Ames, Kim Addonizio, Jim Shepard, Gary Shteyngart, Sam Lipsyte, Chris Sorrentino, Stephanie Bolster, George Elliot Clarke, Dave Eggers and M.G. Vassanji, and many others. SLS focuses not only on the craft of writing, but also writing as a profession. While the pleasure and development of our participants remains an integral part of our mandate, we also provide invaluable access to literary editors, agents, and other professionals in the varying field of writing. Past guests of this variety have included Joshua Knelman (Fiction Editor, The Walrus), Deborah Treisman (The New Yorker), Meg Storey (Tin House Books), Max Winter (Fence Magazine), Eli Horowitz (McSweeney's), Fiona McCrae (Greywolf Press), Radhika Jones (Paris Review), Denise Shannon (Denise Shannon Agency), Jill Bialosky (W.W. Norton) and Catherine Tice (The New York Review of Books) among others. As SLS itself is organized and administered by writers, it realizes the importance of not just honing ones craft, but also transitioning from page to marketplace. The interaction and access available to participants is second to none in literary seminars, providing an excellence of resources truly unique to SLS. |
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