Key Note Speakers and Special Events
Key Note Reading
Natalie Goldberg
Sunday, July 13, 2008 – 8 pm
Author, poet, teacher and painter, Natalie Goldberg has written eleven books, including Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (1986), which has sold over 1.5 million copies, has been translated into fourteen languages, and started a revolution in the way we practice writing today. People from around the world attend her life-changing workshops and retreats. With the filmmaker Mary Feidt, she completed the documentary Tangled Up in Bob, about Bob Dylan's childhood on the Iron Range in northern Minnesota. Her lively paintings can be viewed at the Ernesto Mayans Gallery on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. She currently lives in northern New Mexico. Her most recent book is Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir that came out in February 2008. For more information, go to www.nataliegoldberg.com.
Readings
David King Dunaway on Pete Seeger
Saturday, July 12, 2008 – 7 pm
David Dunaway has been teaching biography and other professional writing courses at UNM since he received his Ph.D. at the University of California Berkeley in 1981. Dunaway’s published work includes Huxley in Hollywood, Aldous Huxley Recollected and How Can I Keep from Singing?: The Ballad of Pete Seeger. Since the Fall of 1995, his national radio series, Writing the Southwest, has been broadcast on National Public Radio. His specialty is producing documentaries presenting literature and history to a wide public audience. Dunaway is the author of a half-dozen volumes and has taught in Denmark and as a Fulbright Scholar in Colombia and Kenya.
Susan Lang reading from her new novel, Moon Lily
Sunday, June
13th – 5 p.m.
Susan Lang is the author of a trilogy published by University of Nevada Press about a woman homesteading in the southwestern wilderness during the years 1929 to 1941. The first novel in the trilogy, Small Rocks Rising, won the 2003 Willa Award. Her second novel, Juniper Blue, was released in 2006 and the third, Moon Lily, is forthcoming in 2008. Presently Faculty Emeritus at Yavapai College in Prescott, she founded and still directs the Southwest Writers Series. She was also director of the Hassayampa Institute for Creative Writing, which she founded in 1996.
Daryl Farmer
Saturday, July 19, 2008 – 7 pm
Daryl Farmer is the author of Bicycling Beyond the Divide, a road narrative about the West, which has just received a Summer 2008 Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writer’s Award. Farmer’s work has appeared in such journals as Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Laurel Review, Quarter After Eight and Prairie Schooner. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has taught writing at the University of Nebraska and Georgia Tech. He will join the Stephen F. Austin State University creative writing faculty in the fall, where he will teach creative nonfiction and direct the SFASU reading series. Farmer attended the Taos Summer Writer’s Conference in 2000 and served as a graduate student intern in 2004.
Special Musical Guests
We are pleased to announce that the 2008 Conference will feature a performance by our special musical guests Joy Harjo and Arrow Dynamics. More details about key note speakers and other special events will be posted soon.
Special Guests
Jeff Davis
Jeff Davis will be leading daily yoga sessions throughout the conference. These sessions are open to all participants; please bring your own yoga mat.
Mini Workshops
Three afternoon-length workshops taught by Taos Conference special guests David Dunaway, Daryl Farmer and Susan Lang. workshops are all held on July 13th from 2-4:30 at the Quality Inn. For details on this year's Mini Workshops and instructors please visit the Mini Workshop page.
