BRITTANY, FRANCE

Manoir La Chaussee is in the village of Langon, south-east Brittany, in the Ille et Vilaine department. The building is steep in history, starting with the 14th century. Over the years it has been modified by successive noble families. The famous gardens at Manoir La Chaussee were designed by, Alan Manson, a leading landscape gardener to the Queen of England. Manson wanted to create a vision of royalty that would survive all seasons. There are over 10,000 species of plants and flowers, many that are both rare and exotic. The garden has been compared to Monet's garden at his home in Giverny.

Butler is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. In 2001 he won a National Magazine Award for "Fair Warning," a short story that was published in the journal Zoetrope: All-Story, and, four years later, he won another National Magazine Award for "The One in White," a short story published in The Atlantic Monthly. In 1993, his first story collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The New York Times praised the book's "startling, dreamlike" stories about the lives of Vietnamese immigrants living in Louisiana, and said it was "remarkable not for its flaws, but for how beautifully it achieves its daring project of making the Vietnamese real." The Pulitzer committee said that the stories "raise the literature of the Vietnam conflict to an original and highly personal new level." Butler also is the judge of the annual Robert Olen Butler Prize, a short-fiction award founded and sponsored by Del Sol Press. Butler taught creative writing at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, from 1985 to 2000. He then joined the faculty of Florida State University as a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor, holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing. He has taught several times at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival at the University of Iowa.

Michele Roberts is the author of twelve highly acclaimed novels, including The Looking Glass and Daughters of the House which won the WJSmith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her memoir Paper Houses was BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week in June 2007. She has also published poetry and short stories, most recently collected in Mud-stories of sex and love (2010). She is half-English and half-French, she lives in London and in the Mayenne, France. She is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Michele worked as a librarian for the British Council in Bangkok (1973-4) and was Poetry Editor for Spare Rib (1974) and City Limits magazine (1981-3). She is Chair of the British Council literature advisory panel and is a regular book reviewer and broadcaster. Michele is the author of many novels, including the acclaimed Daughters of the House (1992), the story of Therese and Leonie, French and English cousins of the same age, growing up together in an old Normandy house after the Second World War. It was awarded the WH Smith Literary Award and it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for fiction. Her other novels include the semi-autobiographical A Piece of the Night (1978) and The Visitation (1983); The Wild Girl (1984) and The Book of Mrs Noah (1987), which both rework biblical stories; In the Red Kitchen (1990), a tale of Victorian spirituality; Flesh & Blood (1994); Impossible Saints (1997); Fair Exchange (1999), fictional episodes from the lives of Mary Wollstoncraft and William Wordsworth set at the time of the French revolution; and The Looking Glass (2000), inspired by the life of the French poet Mallarme. Her most recent novel is Delusion (2008) and her book of collective stories Mud-stories of sex and Love (2010)--”Michele Roberts is one of those writers descended perhaps as much from Monet and Debussy as Virginia Woolf or Keats... To read a book by her is to savour colour, sound, taste, texture and touch as never before” London Times. Michele was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999 and she was awarded the Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France) in 2000.

Karen Essex is an award-winning novelist, journalist and screenwriter. She is the author of the national and international best-selling novel, Leonardo’s Swans (Doubleday 2006), about the rivalries among the powerful women painted by the great master when he was employed by the Duke of Milan. Continuing in the theme of women’s influence upon culture and art, her latest novel, Stealing Athena, chronicles the story of the controversial Elgin Marbles from the points of view of two fascinating women, Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin, and Aspasia, mistress to Pericles. Karen has also written two acclaimed biographical novels about the queen of Egypt, Kleopatra and Pharoh, published in 2001 and 2002, which she adapted into a screenplay for Warner Bros. She also adapted Anne Rice’s novel The Mummy or Ramses the Damed into a screenplay for Titanic director James Cameron and 20th Century Fox. She has also written a screenplay about Kamehameha, the first king of Hawaii, for Columbia/Tristar and a dance movie for Jennifer Lopes Entertainment and Paramount Pictures. Karen was born and raised in New Orleans. She graduated from Tulane University, graduate school at Vanderbilt University and she received an MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College in Vermont. She’s appreared on The Today Show and A Word on Words hosted by John Seigenthaler, and PBS and NPR programs. Leonardo’s Swans received the prestigious 2007 Premio Roma for foreign fiction. Essex’s novels are published in twenty-seven languages.

Lawrence Pitkethly is a Professor of Film Studies and Global Communications at the American University of Paris. Recent news: Lawrence’s article on “The Burning of Bombay Street” was published on BBCNI website on March 7th to coincide with the broadcast of his documentary that evening on BBCNI. 2000 Director, author, BELFAST MY LOVE, 90minute documentary for ARTE (France-Germany) and RTE (Ireland). A personal look at my native Northern Ireland. 2001=2002 Writer for Octopus Television, London for three new TV series. 1996-98 Writer FREEDOM, first episode of 10 hour TV series on the American Novel for WNET/13, New York 1995 Executive Producer, writer, WILLIAM STYRON, 56 minute doc on the author of Sophie’s Choice for FR3, France, ‘ecrivains du 20eme siecle. 1995 Executive Produce, series writer, AMERICAN CINEMA, a 10 part series of 54 minute documentaries on the history and tradition of Hollywood cinema. PBS/BBC Premiere Gmbh Hamburg/Dentsu, Japan. Broadcast France and Spain on Canal Plus. Over 100 interviews with American cinema professionals including producers, writers, designers, cinematographers. 1991-94 Director and writer, AMERICAN CINEMA. Directed episodes on The Hollywood Style with Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack, Joseph Mankiewicz, Bertrand Tavernier, Laurence Kasdan and others; The Hollywood Star, with Julia Roberts, Jack Lemmon, Jane Russell, Jon Waters; and The Combat Film with Same Fuller and Oliver Stone. 1991 Executive Producer, ANNA AKHMATOVA, FEAR AND MUSE, a documentary on the legendary Russian poet, narrated by Claire Bloom, PBS 1989- 90 Director and writer, JOSEPH BRODSKY, a 60 minute doc on the Nobel Prize winning Russian poet. Channel 4/UK and PBS. Filmed on location in Leningrad, Moscow and New York. 1983-88 Director, Writer, Producer, VOICES AND VISIONS, thirteen one hour films for US public Television and global broadcast on American poets from Walt Whitman to Sylvia Plath. Directed the episodes on Ezra Pound, Hart Crane, T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath. The series was broadcast in January 1988 and names “Best Cultural Series of the Year”, by Times Magazine. The documentaries received numerous awards including the Gold Prize for “Sylvia Plath” at the Chicago Film Festival. 1982 Co-writer NEW DEAL FOR ARTISTS, narrated by Orson Wells, PBS

Sydney Alice Clark-Wehinger is an associate professor of literature in France. Her work on Shakespeare and French theatre, Le Théâtre romantique en crise, Shakespeare et Nerval, Paris: Harmattan, 2005, was short-listed for a research prize. She is the author of a collection of poems in French and English (Imaginaires, University of Nantes, 1997) and critical articles in French literary reviews. She has co-authored a book on the Anglo-Saxon short story (La nouvelle anglo-saxonne, une étude psychanalytique (Paris: Hachette, 1998). Born in Atlanta, Georgia, she now lives near Paris. Most recent project : Seven Stories from the South, short story collection, total word count: 40,385. Many of the stories explore race and race relations in the modern South, accentuating the significance of dialogue as a dramatic medium for staging class and race tensions.

JUNE 15 - 22, 2011

Accommodations: Manoir House-- Shared twin room, $2,500 Single room, $3,500 Village House--Shared twin room, $1,500. Single: $2,000 Price includes: 2 workshops for 5 days/3 hours a day. (6) dinners proceeded by lectures and readings. (2) one-on-ones. In addition, I will read complete MS for anyone who needs their MS reviewed. If you're interested in bringing someone along with you who will not be taking the workshop, the additional fee will be $1,000.

In addition to Manoir La Chaussee, some of our participants will be staying in a 3 bedroom village house.

The World Heritage Site, Mont Saint Michele, is 1:30 hours from Langon. Mont-St-Michel was used in the 6th and 7th centuries as a stronghold of Romano-British culture and power until it was sacked by the Franks; thus ending the trans-channel culture that had stood since the departure of the Romans in 459 AD. Before the construction of the first monastic establishment in the 8th century, the island was called Mont Tombe. According to legend, the archangel Michael appeared to St. Aubert, bishop of Avranches, in 708 and instructed him to build a church on the rocky islet. But Aubert repeatedly ignored the angel's instruction until Michael burned a hole in the bishop's skull with his finger. That did the trick. The dedication to St Michael occurred on October 16, 708. The mount gained strategic significance in 933 when the Normans annexed the Cotentin Peninsula, thereby placing the mount on the new frontier with Brittany. It is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, which commemorates the 1066 Norman conquest of England. Ducal and royal patronage financed the spectacular Norman architecture of the abbey in subsequent centuries. An Italian architect, William de Volpiano, designed the Romanesque church of the abbey in the 11th century, daringly placing the transept crossing at the top of the mount. Many underground crypts and chapels had to be built to compensate for this weight. These formed the basis for the supportive upward structure that can be seen today. Robert de Thorigny, a great supporter of Henry II of England (who was also Duke of Normandy), reinforced the structure of the buildings and built the main façade of the church in the 12th century. Following his annexation of Normandy in 1204, the King of France, Philip Augustus offered abbot Jourdain a grant for the construction of a new gothic style architectural set which included the addition of the refectory and cloister. The wealth and influence of the abbey extended to many daughter foundations, including St Michael's Mount in Cornwall, England. However, its popularity and prestige as a centre of pilgrimage waned with the Reformation and by the time of the French Revolution there were scarcely any monks in residence. During the Revolution the abbey was closed and converted into a prison, initially to hold clerical opponents of the republican régime. High-profile political prisoners followed, but by 1836 influential figures, including Victor Hugo, had launched a campaign to restore what was seen as a national architectural treasure. The prison was finally closed in 1863, and the mount was declared a historic monument in 1874. Mont Saint Michel and its bay were added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1979.