My Bread Loaf Experience

Christine Melchior (on the left) and Jina Ortiz

The ten-day-long Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference is an intensive learning experience in the midst of the natural beauty of Vermont’s Green Mountains with more than 200 people who share a joy and passion for writing.

I was privileged to have attended the conference this past August.

My days were filled with lectures, workshops, readings, and craft classes. Every night after dinner, we gathered in the Little Theatre to hear readings by seasoned, talented, well-known authors and poets such as Charles Baxter, Richard Bausch, Stacey D’erasmo, Chang-Rae Lee, Louise Gluck, Peter Ho Davies and Philip Levine, the country’s newly appointed poet laureate. The 83-year old gave an inspiring reading and was moved by a packed theatre and two standing ovations.

Putting trepidation aside one night, I read from my manuscript to an audience of more than 100 people at the same podium Robert Frost spoke from decades ago.

Throughout the ten days, I spent hours in the library preparing for the next day’s workshop, browsed the bookstore, and relaxed in the Barn Pub before dinner with fellow writers. The heart of my experience was my every-other-day manuscript workshop with ten other writers and a workshop leader Stacey D’erasmo. We analyzed, critiqued and praised one another’s manuscripts. I went home with an immense amount of constructive feedback that will help me strengthen my novel in progress.

Respites from reading and working came in the form of evening receptions, hikes, musical concerts, a visit to the Robert Frost House, trips to nearby Middlebury, movie nights, meetings with agents and two dances, where writers let loose and danced freestyle, hip hop, swing and salsa until the wee hours in the morning. (Yes, we writers can tear up a dance floor, too.)

Bread Loaf was a place where I was surrounded by beautiful language, exposed to different voices, surprised by twists in story lines and awed by exceptionally good writing and writers.

Christine Melchior

 

September 2011