MONADNOCK PASTORAL POETS & WRITERS RETREAT XIX
THE RETREAT – April 25 – 27, 2025
For over a quarter of a century, this group of writers has gathered annually to celebrate new work and publications as the New Pastoral Poets and Writers. These award-winning writers have been anthologized in China for over a decade, including a book On the Monadnock: The New American Pastoral Poets (Chinese Drama Press: Beijing, 2006). They have spent decades staying true to language written beneath the shadow of the mountain Emerson, Thoreau, and Kinnell made famous—Mount Monadnock.
Please join us for the annual gathering of the Monadnock New Pastoral Poets & Writers as they host their weekend poetry retreat at the Barbara C. Harris Conference Center in Greenfield, NH.
The weekend will be low-key, collegial, but full with small group (6 maximum) workshops (a primary workshop that meets twice and an optional single-session secondary workshop that meets once), an individual conference with mentors, readings by participants, writing time, social time, optional activities such as Saturday night acoustic folk music by The Grumbling Rustics. The conference concludes with the 30th annual reading of mentors, followed by a closing banquet.
There will also be an opportunity to enjoy the almost 350 acres of hiking trails at the Harris Center on Otter Lake. See: www.bchcenter.org or e-mail [email protected] for additional details.
Registration is limited to maintain a small workshop size.
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE
Friday Evening (April 25):
Wine and cheese reception 6 p.m.
American renga ceremony 7:30 p.m.
Saturday (April 26):
Breakfast (buffet style) : 8 a.m.
Primary Workshop 9:30–11 a.m.
Lunch (buffet style): noon
Participants reading 1–2 p.m.
Optional workshop//Indiv. conf./
Leisure activities: 2–4 p.m.
Dinner (buffet style): 6 p.m.
Participants reading 7– 8:30 p.m.
Acoustic music: 8:45 – 10 p.m.
Sunday (April 27):
Breakfast: (buffet style) 8 a.m.
Primary Workshop 9:15—11:15 a.m.
Lunch: (buffet style) noon
Indiv. conf./writing
Optional presentation workshop 1–2 p.m.
31st. Pastoral Poets Reading 2:15—3:45 p.m.
Closing Banquet: 4 p.m.
REGISTRATION
Registration deadline: 3-22-25
Per-preson includes meals and private or semi-private cabin lodging, two workshops, individual conference with mentor, readings, and closing banquet, Adult Friendly Cabin (4 guests) $500, Lodge Double: $550, Lodge single: $650. Day Rate: $390 (meals but no lodging). Late fee (space available) add $50 (after 3-22-24) (Online payment option, add $15 processing fee)
Primary Workshop (Meets twice)
Fiction/Drama (T. Farish, D. Mulligan)
Prose/Personal Narrative: (Becky Rule, Maura MacNeil )
Poetry: (J. Hodgen/Brian Evans-Jones; S. Roney-O’Brien, [R. Martin, Sat. p.m. Indiv.])
Please include with the application 3 poems or 3-5 pages of fiction or prose you’d like to workshop.
The Mentors:
Novelist Terry Farish’s seventh book, The Good Braider, won the 2013 Lupine Award. Her children’s book The Cat Who Liked Potato Soup won the NH Reading Association’s Book of the Year and has been released in Japan. She is working on her fourteenth book, which includes three adult novels and six novels for adolescents.
John Hodgen’s latest poetry collection, What We May Be, will be published by Lynx House Press in the fall of 2023. John has received AWP’s Donald Hall Prize and the Grolier Poetry Prize among his many awards. The Univ. of Pitt. Press released his 4th book of poetry, Heaven and Earth Holding Company, in 2010.
Maura MacNeil is the author of the poetry collections Lost Houses, A History of Water, and This Last Place. She is the founder and editor of Off the Margins and is a Professor of Creative Writing at New England College.
Rodger Martin, co-editor of The Granite State Poetry Series, has an Appalachia award for poetry. He has four poetry books: The Battlefield Guide, The Blue Moon Series, For All the Tea Zhonggou and The Nemo Poems. Hid fifth book, a series of translations with Chinese poet/calligrapher Zi Chuan, is due out in Taiwan late 2024,also in 2024 he was chosen toio receive the Stanley Kunitz Medal.
Diane V. Mulligan has written two novels for adults: What She Inherits (2017), which was named an Honorable Mention for Mainstream Fiction in Writers’ Digest’s 25th Annual Self-Published Book Awards, and The Latecomers Fan Club (2013), which was named a 2014 IndieReader Discovery Award winner. Her first novel, Watch Me Disappear (2012), for young adults, was a Kindle Book Review Best Indie Book Award finalist in 2013.
Susan Roney-O’Brien, winner of Nightshade Press’s William and Kingman Page Poetry Book Award and NEATE’s Poet of the Year, she has published two books of poetry, Farmwife and Earth. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Diner. She received The Stanley Kunitz Medal in 2019.
Rebecca Rule is a full-time writer, humorist, storyteller, host of the NH Authors Series on NHPTV for ten years, and current host of Our Hometown on NHPTV. The author of a dozen books for children and adults, her latest is That Reminds Me of a Funny Story: a memoir, how-to, and compendium of Yankee humor. She writes a monthly humor column for New Hampshire Magazine called “Ayuh.” Her daughter, Adi Rule, is also a writer.
Brian Evans-Jones is a poet and teacher from Britain, now living in Sharon, NH. He was Poet Laureate of Hampshire, England, before moving to America in 2014 to do his MFA at UNH, where his thesis adviser was Charles Simic. He won the Maureen Egan award from Poets & Writers in 2017, and his poems have been published in journals and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Inflectionist Review, The Café Review, Eunoia Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal, and Last Stanza Magazine, as well as being shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in the UK. He has been an associate editor for three journals, and he hosts a monthly poetry open mic in Temple, NH.
USE THE BUTTONS BELOW TO REGISTER AND PAY ONLINE WITH PAYPAL
| Adult Friendly Cabin (4 guests) | |
| Double | |
| Single | |
| Day Rate (meals, but no lodging) |
To register/pay by mail, make checks payable to:
Monadnock Pastoral Poetry Retreat
30 North Rd., Hancock, NH 03449