Clemmons Family Farm Proudly Presents Writing With Voice: a Double Writing Workshop with Artists-In-Residence

Feel the warmth and artistry of California on the Clemmons farm this Fall! Join authors and associate professors Keenan Norris (San Jose State University) and Duana Fullwiley (Stanford University) for two powerful writing workshops designed for finding and/or uplifting your voice through fiction and non-fiction writing.

Participants can be writers at any level who work in diverse genres. You are welcome to bring your favorite writing elements, however, journals will be provided.

Workshop Part 1: Finding Your Voice through Non-Fiction Writing with Keenan Norris (11:00 - 12:30)

Artist's statement:

Participants will explore the concept that "oftentimes it's not simply the stories we tell, but how we choose to tell our stories that cuts the deepest groove into a reader's consciousness.” This workshop will present multiple exercises, strategies, and ways of thinking about your story that will help you fill that blank page with a compiling storytelling voice.

Workshop Part 2: Cultural Attunement and Voice with Duana Fullwiley (2:00-4:00)

Artist's Statement:

No matter where we hail from around the globe, we are intimately tied to others in tangible ways. To understand the other, to communicate and share experiences that foster better relationships, it behooves us to cultivate cultural attunement. That is, how can we align with—sense, feel, and comprehend –our fellow humans in their particular, common, or diverse experiences? What can we learn from other people’s idioms of expression, mores and norms as guideposts for living and embracing our human patrimony whose more marginal linguistic, philosophical and even bodily aspects are being sloughed off as “majority” cultures and languages absorb them?

As a writer and medical anthropologist, I believe the answer lies in attuning to the other’s deepest concerns and aspirations –as well as to our own. As the workshop facilitator, I will draw on insights from my own processes of listening, observing, and cultivating cultural attunement by first reading from reflections on my fieldwork in Dakar, Senegal and Paris, France. I will start us off with a short reading of two of my published poems as well as one in progress piece to discuss the craft of moving from mere social observation and description to giving voice to the emotional bridges of human belonging that poetry can offer.

Workshop participants will then be given writing prompts taken from contemporary poetry, non-fiction, and fiction that exemplify and diagnose the many points (cultural and transcultural) that link us in our pursuit of connection in its broadest sense. Working from aspects of the prompts and readings, we will then have a generative writing session to explore the stories, memories and new imaginings that the prompts elicit. We will also have time to share and listen to each other’s words and reflections. (Sharing your work will be completely voluntary).

Registration Costs

$40 per person for one workshop

$60 per person for both workshops

Maximum Workshop Attendees: 20 for each workshop

About the Artist

Keenan Norris is an Associate Professor of American literature and creative writing at San Jose State University and in November 2021 he was the University of Virginia's Rea Visiting Writer. His scholarship, editorials and essays have appeared in the Oxford Bibliographies in African-American History, TED-ED, Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Review of Books, San Francisco Chronicle, Alta and many other venues.

Keenan Norris’s book of essays, Chi Boy: Native Sons and Chicago Reckonings, will be published in November. His latest novel, The Confession of Copeland Cane, was published in 2021. His essay “One Coyote” won a 2021 Folio: Eddie Award and was a runner-up for a National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. His debut novel Brother and the Dancer won the 2012 James D. Houston Award.

About the Artist

Duana Fullwiley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. She is a literary medical anthropologist who brings together global takes on science, medicine and the body. Her work broadly engages questions of ethics, genetics and how humans imagine and seed ideas of difference that can separate and estrange, celebrate or disparage, embolden and hierarchize, maximize or minimize some aspect of group identities. She has authored anthropological works focused on the human actors within science that have written the normative languages of their fields in terms of race, nation, territory, and ever-shifting concepts of inclusion. Her work is interdisciplinary and multi-lingual (English, French, Wolof), while her first book, The Enculturated Gene, spans and connects metropolises that are not often linked (Oakland, Paris, Dakar). She has also written numerous articles on ancestry genetics.

The larger themes of her work have also inspired her artistic engagements with medical power and scientific legacies that emerge in her literary writings and curations published in venues such as Ars Medica, The Boston Review and exhibited at the San Francisco Exploratorium. She has been awarded fellowships from the Fulbright Scholars Program, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

Break (Corn) Bread with the Artists-in-Residence!

Join us for a traditional African-American Soul Food Lunch between workshops!

Featuring the cuisine of Chef Marc Anthony

Saint Louis, Missouri native Chef Marc Antony is owner of the popular new restaurant Barbara Jean’s Southern Kitchen in the Old North End in Burlington. He is a 2016 graduate of Ferrandi: The French School of Culinary Arts. Chef Marc's cooking offers an intimate culinary experience blended with a fusion of Asian, French, Italian, Spanish, and traditional southern American cuisine. With seasonal and farm-to-table ingredients as the foundation of each recipe, he is also a culinary arts instructor at The Essex Culinary Resort and Spa.

Chef Anthony's traditional soul food lunch for the Writing Workshop at the Clemmons Farm will be served from 12:45 pm - 1:45 p.m. This add-on option offers participants a delicious, casual opportunity for socializing with our two artists-in-residence and one another, between the workshops, and to enjoy the beautiful Clemmons farm.

Menu:

* Fried chicken

* Sweet potatoes

* Collard greens

* Black-eye peas

* Corn bread

Price:

$35.00

***************************

FAQs

Why Are We Doing This?

An important part of Clemmons Family Farm's mission is to build community across differences of race and culture, and to create a shared love and sense of place for the historic Clemmons farm-- one of the 0.4% of farms in the nation that remain African-American owned.

We also strive to help more Vermonters learn about African-American history, art, and culture, and to experience the joy of connecting and co-creating with Vermont's artists of African descent. This double writing workshop is one of the many ways we can achieve these goals.

COVID-19 precautions:

1. You must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to participate. Masks are encouraged: optional outdoors, but mandatory inside of the historic Barn House. This is an outdoor activity, but we will be inside if there is inclement weather.

2. If you are ill, not feeling well, have a fever or a cough, please stay home and take care of yourself!

3. Maximum participants: 25

Will children enjoy this?

This workshop is designed for adults. However, high school students may enjoy this workshop.

What Should I Bring?

1. Your favorite journal, if you have one. Journals will also be provided if you need one.

2. Your favorite pen or pencil.

3. Comfortable clothes.

4. Drinking water or another cold beverage.

5. A relaxed attitude- this program is very low-key.

6. PLEASE take away what you bring (do not leave trash on the farm!).

This event is scheduled for outdoors behind the Barn House if the weather is nice, or indoors at the Storytelling Room in the Barn House if the weather is not so nice.

Where do I park?

Parking is located on the lawns right at the entrance of 2213 Greenbush Road- you will see "Event Parking" signs indicating the areas where you can park. You will cross the street and three houses north to the Barn House at 2122 Greenbush Road.

Accessibility: Please let us know if you have difficulty walking- we are reserving parking for you right at the Barn House at 2122 Greenbush Road. Email clemmonsfamilyfarm@gmail.com or call (765) 560-5445 and leave a message.

Where can I make a donation?

Please check our webpage here for information on how to donate to the 501c3 nonprofit organization Clemmons Family Farm, Inc. that stewards the historic Clemmons farm. Visit: https://www.clemmonsfamilyfarm.org/please-donate.html

Admission policy

Advance registration is required and your name must be on the registration list in order to be admitted. Only 20 attendees per workshop will be admitted to enable us to offer quality interactions and a safe, low-key, and family-friendly environment. Clemmons Family Farm reserves the right to refuse admission or eject, at our sole discretion, any person behaving dangerously or inappropriately, or for safety and health reasons.

By attending this Event, You agree that visual/audio recordings of the Event, including your voice and likeness, may be used for any purpose on a worldwide basis, in perpetuity, without any compensation to You.

Clemmons Family Farm shall not be responsible or liable for any loss, damage, cost, or injury that arises from, or in connection with, Your attendance at this Event.

No Smoking

The Clemmons farm is a smoke-free environment- both indoors and outdoors.

No Weapons

The safety and well-being of our visitors, artists, and staff are of the utmost importance. To ensure a safe venue for all, the possession of firearms, fireworks, explosives, incendiary devices, knives, or weapons of any kind is prohibited on the Clemmons farm property and in the farm's facilities, except those carried by law enforcement officers who are on duty. All visitors to the farm, and their belongings, such as bags or purses, are subject to search and enforcement, and anyone found in violation will be asked to secure the weapon inside their vehicle or at home or leave the property immediately. No ticket returns, refunds, or exchanges will be made for people found in violation of the Clemmons Family Farm’s weapons ban.

How can I contact the organizer with any questions?

Please contact us if you have any questions about the event. Email clemmonsfamilyfarm@gmail.com or call (765) 560-5445 and leave a message.

***************************************

About the Clemmons Family Farm: Preserve, Empower, Build

Did you know that over the past century, African-Americans have lost 93% of their land assets: from a combined total of 44 million acres in the 1920's to just 3.5 million acres today?

According to the 2012 United States agriculture census, of the more than 7000 farms in Vermont, only about 17 are African-American-owned or operated.

The Clemmons farm is among the just 0.4% of all farms in the United States that remain African American owned.

Located in Charlotte near beautiful Lake Champlain, the historic Clemmons farm is ​one of the largest African-American-owned historic farms in Vermont today. The farm includes 6 historic buildings (circa late 1700s-1800s), a spacious 1990’s residence, and 148 acres of prime farmland and forests, ponds and streams abundant with wildlife.

99-year-old Jackson and Lydia Clemmons purchased their beloved historic farm in 1962 for $35,000- an astronomical amount of money for a young African-American couple just starting their careers- under a 30-year mortgage. They have never sold a single acre due to their firm belief in land as an important asset for African-Americans to build equity and legacy.

In 2019, a group of Clemmons family members, friends and advisers co-founded the 501c3 nonprofit organization- Clemmons Family Farm, Inc.- to preserve and steward the farm under a 20-year lease and to continue the community-building work, farming, and celebration of African-American history, art and culture, that Jack and Lydia led on their farm for nearly 60 years.

This writing workshop is closely tied to our organizational mission to:

PRESERVE the 148-acre Clemmons farm as a Black-owned land and cultural heritage asset and a historic site of national importance.

EMPOWER a growing network of Vermont's Black artists and culture bearers with opportunities for professional development, advocacy, visibility, networking, paid engagements, collective healing, and a safe haven for creativity that helps them to thrive.

BUILD a loving multicultural community around African-American/African diaspora history, arts and culture.