Located in historic Round Top, Texas, 75 miles east of Austin, The International Festival-Institute was founded in 1972 by world-renowned concert pianist James Dick and has developed superb year round education and performance programs. It has also created a unique 200-acre campus—Festival Hill—containing major performance facilities, historic houses, extensive gardens, parks and nature preserves. Through its singular collection of rare books, manuscripts, archival material, music and historic recordings, photographs and objects, the Festival-Institute is also known as an important center for research and scholarly study. Planted with thousands of trees and bushes of various species, Festival Hill offers visitors lakes, picnic areas, jogging trails, and wonderful herb gardens.
We'll have double-occupancy accommodations (two twin beds in each room). Dinner on Friday evening, 3 meals on Saturday (including continental breakfast), continental breakfast on Sunday, and drinks/snacks during breaks are included. A map of the Festival Hill campus is here (pdf).
Registration fees for this weekend retreat are $375 for SCN members, $395 for non-members. The fee includes two nights in a double-occupancy room and five meals. For a single-occupancy room, the rate is $25/night higher ($425 for members; $445 for non-members). To register, please use our online form.
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Participants have the option of an on-your-own Sunday night stayover. Double-occupancy rate for this extra night is $55; single-occupancy rate is $80.
For those flying to the conference: we will not provide transportation to/from the airport; however, we will serve as a go-between among those needing transportation.
Because we want an intimate retreat, where we can really talk & listen & hold each other's stories as sacred, we are able to accept a limited number of participants. We expect these places to fill very quickly, so please register as soon as you can.
Schedule / Agenda
In this workshop you consider the contemporary memoir—what makes it work and what drags it down. Discussions of autobiography, memoir, honesty, the right to speak, authentic voice, and the difference between truth and fact fill early conversations. Later you practice the skills necessary to translate life experience onto the page: finding Shimmering Images (iconic memories), understanding how they govern story structure, choosing a beginning, seeing the ending implicit in that beginning, and creating a narrative arc that engages readers' curiosity. But more than compositional basics, you explore the key attribute that can set a memoir apart in the marketplace: Compassion. A compassionately conceived memoir has the power to change your life and the lives of others. Through group exercises and individual writing assignments, you practice using compassion to re-see life events, develop the complex persona of the narrator, and portray loved ones (and enemies) as multi-dimensional, fallible characters. Compassion is the key to winning readers' hearts.
