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Every summer for over 40 years, the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley has brought together poets, prose writers and screenwriters for separate weeks of workshops, individual conferences, lectures, panels, readings, and discussions of the craft and the business of writing. Our aim is to assist writers to improve their craft and thus move them closer to achieving their goals. The Community has a competitive admissions procedure and the level of writing is high, but interested writers and poets should not hesitate to apply.

The Community of Writers was established in 1969 by novelists Blair Fuller and Oakley Hall, who were both residents of the valley. It was originally staffed by a band of San Francisco writers including David Perlman, Walter Ballenger, Barnaby Conrad and John Leggett, the latter two of whom went on to found, respectively, the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and the Napa Writers Conference. The Community of Writers continues to be directed by Brett Jones.

Over the years the community has mounted workshops in Fiction, Nonfiction, Screenwriting, Playwriting, Poetry, and Nature Writing (the Art of the Wild Program, which was co-produced by the University of California at Davis), and Writing the Medical Experience. Lisa Alvarez and Louis B. Jones now co-direct the Fiction Program and Michael Carlisle directs the nonfiction Program of the Writers Workshop, which were for twenty years directed by Carolyn Doty. Literary agent Michael Carlisle directs the Nonfiction Program. Galway Kinnell directed the Poetry Program for 17 years and Robert Hass has directed it since 2004. Diana Fuller directs the Screenwriters Workshop, which was founded by screenwriters Tom Rickman and Gill Dennis.

The Community publishes the Omnium Gatherum & Newsletter, chronicling the publishing and other successes of its participants and staff.

Squaw Valley, located in the California Sierra Nevada, close to the north shore of Lake Tahoe, is a ski resort, the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics. Summers are warm and sunny; participants will have opportunities to hike to the local waterfalls, take nature walks up the mountain, swim in Lake Tahoe, and play tennis, ice skate, or bike along the Truckee River. The Community of Writers is grateful to the Squaw Valley Ski Corp, which for all of our 44 years has provided us our conference facilities at subsidized rates. Many of our events take place in the Olympic House, the lodge at the foot of the ski area, and the Olympic Village Lodge, just a short walk from there.

Squaw Valley is a four-hour drive from the Bay Area, and a one-hour drive from the Reno/Lake Tahoe Airport. About half of our participants bring cars, the other half carpool or arrive by flying into the Reno Airport.

• POETRY: June 22-29, 2013 (Sat - Sat)
• WRITERS WORKSHOPS: July 8-15, 2012 (Mon-Mon)
• SCREENWRITING WORKSHOP:July 8-15, 2012 (Mon-Mon)

Make sure your submission/application arrives before the April 5 deadline; all submissions will be read and evaluated before any admissions decisions are made.

Financial aid is available for each of our writing workshops. Requests for financial aid must be made in your application. Please indicate the minimum amount of financial aid you would need to get, in order to attend. Financial aid decisions are made after admission decisions. If an applicant is accepted, but we don’t have enough aid for him or her, we will still issue an invitation in the hopes that other means of support may be able to be found by the applicant to attend. Likewise, if an applicant has indicated that she needs a certain amount of aid, but we can’t provide the full amount, we will grant out what we can.

The Community of Writers presents readings, panel discussions and craft talks to the participants and staff of the workshops. As a service to our community, we offer most of these literary events to the members of the public, free of charge. In July, a Schedule of Events will be posted on this site and can be downloaded in PDF form. If you plan to join us at these events, please consider making a donation to help support this valuable program. Visit the Public Events page.

The Community of Writers Workshops have been made possible by grants and donations from the Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the Anne & Gordon Getty Foundation, the Lojo Foundation, Hachette Book Group, the National Endowment for the Arts, Lou De Mattei and Amy Tan, Random House, and Lucinda Watson, as well as numerous individual contributions from our friends, former participants, and staff. 

The Community is a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation. Donations are tax-deductable. Tax ID: 23-7179177

For more information, contact Laura Cerruti, Director of Development at (415) 221-6901

Checks can be made out to The Community of Writers and mailed to PO Box 1416, Nevada City, CA 95959. Or visit PayPal or JustGive.Org and donate securely with a credit card.