Tag Archive for arts workshop international

COME TO ASSISI!

The world is going to hell. You want to write about it, a novel, but you don’t know where to start.

The world is going to hell. You want to escape it, just briefly, and write a novel, but you don’t know where to go.

You’ve started to write a novel, but it’s become such a mess that you wish the entire thing would go to hell.

Come to Assisi!

I’ll be leading a two-week fiction writing workshop from the tail end of June into early July at Art Workshop International in Assisi, Italy. I’ve been doing this for many years. Assisi is beautiful, the hotel is beautiful, and you’ll hang around with writers and artists making beautiful work.

We’ll get you started, or keep you going, unknot the mess and straighten things out. You’ll critique and be critiqued by others in the workshop and, not entirely incidentally, eat wonderful food. You’ll sit on the terrace and watch the sun go down.

Come to Assisi!

You need more pix?

COME TO ASSISI!

 

The 2017 SJ Rozan Calendars are here!

For your gift-buying pleasure, including, of course, gifts for yourself.  They’re not quite all here (kind of like me) — Accordions to come, give me a few days.  But

New York City is here

img_5194

and

Assisi is here.

photo 1(4)

And please note: Proceeds this year go to Planned Parenthood. So, buy away!

More Italy photos for you

I’m back, supremely jetlagged, and have managed to stagger out to the Rancho.  Bella, because I know you want to know, had a marvelous time with her cat sitter while I was gone. He was doing research much of the time he was at the apartment and therefore was sitting still.  This created a number of perfect opportunities to pet the cat, of which he apparently took advantage.  Bella says he can come back anytime.

I have about ten thousand photos from Assisi and environs, which I’ll be posting over the next week.  To start, here are a bunch of them.

 

IMG_0481

field below town

 

IMG_0395

basilica reflected in vine-covered cafe window

 

IMG_0380

new roof tiles among the old (you didn’t think you were going to escape the roof tiles, did you?)

 

IMG_0267

sunflower

 

IMG_0308

with art workshop international staff visiting an artist friend at civitella ranieri

 

IMG_0240

new section at assisi cemetery

 

IMG_0320

perugia

 

IMG_0312

lunch in perugia

 

IMG_0085

courting couple with chaperone

 

IMG_0138

a gaggle of nuns

 

 

 

 

Julia the farmer

I’ve written from Assisi before about the Nigerian woman and her Italian husband who cleared the earthquake debris out of the San Pietro churchyard four years ago and started a farm.  The farm is one of the first stops I make when I arrive here every year and I’m pleased to report they’re doing well.

 

IMG_0156Julia

 

IMG_0250plums

 

IMG_0251more plums

 

IMG_0252giant zucchini

 

IMG_0253

onions

IMG_0255plums again

Twenty-ninth Saturday, from Assisi

 

Tile roofs’ corduroy

Soft with spots of olive moss,

Spiky with dried grass.

 

Sun slides above hill.

In valley, sudden shadows

On newly bright fields.

 

On pine tree’s bent tip

Mourning dove lights, balances,

Calls, waits, calls again.

 

 

Hot days, long walks

Huge heat wave in this part of Italy, a good 10-15 degrees F higher than usual. Meaning, 90-100 instead of 75-90.  Ah, well.  Does it stop me?

I write in the morning and teach in the early afternoon.  In the early early morning, when it’s cool; in the mid-to-late afternoon, when it’s ridiculously hot; and in the late evening, when it’s thinking about cooling down again, I’ve been taking long walks.  Sometimes alone, sometimes with my buddy Barb.  The ones in the evening are classic post-dinner strolls and are usually with a group of about half-a-dozen people.

These are photos from the first three days’ worth of walks.

 

IMG_0043

evening from the hotel terrace during the blackout

 

 

 

IMG_0105

flowers in town

 

IMG_0100

gold tiles on the Basilica rose window

 

IMG_0130

convent at San Damiano

 

IMG_0065

 

grate on convent door

 

 

Assisi, Day One

No sooner had we arrived than, in the middle of a pizza lunch in a basement place a few streets away, the lights went out. Blew their transformer, thought I. They brought candles and we continued devouring our pizza (mine was arugula and shrimp) because we were starving because the food on the plane was awwwwwful. We finished up and went back to the Hotel Giotto, where we found I was right but I was wrong. It was the transformer, but not the restaurant’s. The entire towns of Assisi and Santa Maria degli Angeli were without power.

 

The reason and the problem are the same: this is a major-league heat wave, 99F-102F every day. More and more homes and businesses are getting a/c, which no one around here used to have. So the draw on the power grid is more and more enormous on days like this. And of course, it’s on days like this when you care whether or not you have power.

 

Everywhere was out for a few hours. Then the power slowly started coming back, first in Santa Maria degli Angeli, then up at the top of Assisi, then creeping uphill and creeping downhill toward us. Creep, creep. No power meant no water, either, because the Giotto uses pumps. The hotel staff did a monumental job making and serving dinner by candlelight. We ate on the terrace and watched the lights come back on in this street and that street and the other street… Ours was the last, the very last, and our segment of it was the last segment. Around 11:30 the hotel manager and a lovely young man from the maintenance staff were suddenly knocking on room doors to come in and throw breakers and bring the rooms back on line. The a/c in my room still doesn’t work; I may have to move tomorrow. But water! We have water!

 

Still, the churches are here, and the streets, and the Umbrian plain. Now that there’s cappuccino in the cafés again, I can deal.