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Updated: August 5, 2009, 7:21 pm	Share    Print    Email

Jon Robin Baitz, Annette Handley Chandler, Steve Hamilton, Emma Walton Hamilton, Alec Baldwin and Robert Reeves were all part of this year's Southampton Writers Conference. Photo by Star Black

Southampton - Last year was particularly noteworthy for the Southampton Writers Conference (SWC), but with the possible exception of the year of its very inception, this 34th year has probably been its most significant. Change, in the shared letters of the words, is challenging! 2009 has indeed been a year of challenging change, as yet another literary genre conference was created and a monumental literary force within the conference was lost.

After more than three decades as a broadly defined, generic, two week "Writers Conference," last year the SWC added the elements of a Children's Literature Conference (Lou Ann Walker, Director) on the front end and a Screenwriting Conference (Annette Handley Chandler, Director) on the back end, essentially doubling the length of the SWC. In the early days of the SWC, Southampton College served more as a host than an administrator. Now, particularly with the Stony Brook University acquisition and support, the distinguished Southampton MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literature, under the direction of MFA Chair and SWC Executive Director Robert Reeves, has made this conference truly its own and elevated it far beyond its early ambitions.

Attendees at one of the many evening events consider the numerous participating writer's titles. Photo by Doulgas Harrington

For the 2009 season, Reeves enlisted two pivotal figures in the contemporary history of East End theater to add yet another discipline to SWC. Emma Walton Hamilton and Steve Hamilton, two of the three founders of the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, who took on the task of creating the Playwriting Conference. Rather than adding an individual session for the new genre, it overlapped all three sessions and is the longest of the four conferences. The added dimension of playwriting was further enhanced by the inclusion of the Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) and its artistic director, Bill Carden, taking residence on the Southampton campus for the three sessions of the Playwriting Conference.

This last installment of the 2009 Southampton Writers Conference Reporter's Notebook will look back on this very ambitious summer. It will chronologically follow the various literary disciplines that are featured in each of the distinctive conferences. Although each, with the exception of the Screenwriting Conference, has been reported on in the previous two installments, we take this opportunity to take a broad look back as the 2009 SWC calls it a wrap.

Wednesday, July 8 marked the official start of this year's conference as students, faculty and guest instructors gathered to meet and greet. Although the SWC has long had the cache of celebrity associated with it, as is unavoidable based on its location and the extraordinary caliber of the guest writers and artists that show up every year, this is first and foremost a working conference. No better proved out by the fact that even before the late afternoon welcoming ceremony, legendary children's literature writer Norton Juster had given an informal lecture and Q&A in Duke Hall before lunch. Later that evening Juster gave the keynote address that ushered in the Southampton Children's Literature and Playwriting Conferences that represent Session I of the SWC.

During the first session labs and craft lectures were given in children's literature by authors and industry insiders Tor Seidler, Mitchell Kriegman, Cindy Kane and Emma Walton Hamilton, along with illustrators like Gahan Wilson. Evening events, which are open to the public, are integral parts of each of the sessions, including a dual genre discussion of adapting children's literature for the stage with Pulitzer Prize winner Marsha Norman and iTheatrics CEO Tim McDonald, and a very special session concluding evening with Julie Andrews, her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton and artist James McMullen discussing their collaboration on Andrews' upcoming children's poetry anthology.

Alan Alda and Roger Rosenblatt during their craft lecture in Duke Hall. Photo by Star Black

As noted earlier, the new playwriting conference overlapped all three sessions and during its first week it more than established its presence as part of the SWC line-up. The first session of this genres' conference was lead by Pulitzer and Tony nominated playwright Craig Lucas, the second by Marsha Norman and Emily Mann, and the third by Laura Maria Censabella. Crucial to its impact, beyond the labs and lectures, was the opportunity for emerging and established playwrights to have the chance to hear their words read by the professional actors of the EST. The evening events for the second session related to playwriting and the SWC itself, included two staged readings by the EST, a discussion on theater collaboration, an Alan Alda reading of excerpts from a new play by Robert Brustein about the life of Anton Chekhov, and performances of Mann's "A Seagull In The Hamptons" and "The Last Cargo Cult," written and performed by monologist Mike Daisey.

The centerpiece of the SWC is indeed the legendary writers conference itself and it represents the second and longest of the sessions. Renowned American author Richard Ford kicked off the session with a keynote address on July 15. Among the numerous authors, agents, publishers, artists and MFA distinguished faculty members that lent their insight, expertise and experience to the SWC not previously mentioned were Billy Collins, Julie Sheehan, Joe Pintauro, Roger Rosenblatt, Melissa Bank, Matthew Klam, Zachary Lazar, Fiona Maazel, John Wray, Jackie Reingold, Joe Mantello, Tony Walton, Lanford Wilson, Jeffrey Sweet, Elizabeth Benedict, Kaylie Jones, Frederic Tuten, Star Black, Harris Yulin, and Meg Wolitzer, to name, believe it or not, just a few. If you are the company you keep, at the SWC all are in very impressive company indeed.

Of the many highlights of the SWC second session, two in particular stand out for this reporter. First, the early morning, Duke Hall craft lecture given by Alan Alda and Roger Rosenblatt which was not only illuminating, but funny, engaging and unpretentious. Pardon the cliché, but the audience was literally rolling in the aisles. The second and without a doubt the most emotionally touching event of the entire summer conference was the tribute paid to the late Frank McCourt, who passed away during the conference. The world renowned Irish-American author of "Angela's Ashes" had been a decade long MFA faculty member and SWC participant, teaching his immensely popular class in memoir writing. On July 24 friends, family, fans and colleagues gathered to launch the edition of the MFA program's literary journal, The Southampton Review, which had been created in his honor. Instead of just celebrating a launch, they celebrated a life by remembering the beloved author in words and video clips of McCourt himself, filmed during his tenure on the Southampton campus. The legacy of McCourt is immeasurable, not only on the world of literature in general, but within the specific world of this very special conference and campus.

Southampton Writers Conference participating students Jennifer Holley, Alley Villasana and Dominick Quartuccio. Photo by Douglas Harrington

The Southampton Screenwriting Conference, also in its sophomore year, finished up the SWC as Session III and had the same top notch line-up as the previous genres. One of whom was the playwright/screenwriter/director/novelist Peter Hedges ("Pieces of April," "Dan In Real Life" and "What's Eating Gilbert Grape") who was this year's recipient of the Alan J. Pakula Prize. Moderated by Bette Gordon, Hedges shared his craft, methodology and motivations with a packed Avram Hall audience during one of the session's two evening programs. The final evening event that signaled the conclusion of this year's SWC was a conversation between favorite son of the Hamptons actor/author/activist Alec Baldwin and playwright/screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz. These iconic figures of stage, film and television shared their views on the art of screenwriting not only as part of their on-stage banter, but also through clips of classic and contemporary films they had pre-chosen to illustrate their commentary. It was yet another seminal literary conversation that is the hallmark of the SWC.

The greatest accolades a conference like this can receive should, understandably, come from the participants themselves, as seven-year participant Jennifer Holley explained, "It is my seventh year here and it gets better and better. I started the first year in poetry with Billy Collins. I have studied with other poetry teachers, non-fiction teachers, I am studying screenwriting now and children's literature. There are so many options, I absolutely love it. I have met people from all around the world and made lasting friendships, along with some great connections with people in the publishing world." She went to say, "The thing that is nice about this conference is that it is very social. You have lunchtime with the authors, you get to go to the beach with them if you want, we have cocktail hours after the receptions. There is a great chance to socialize and meet these people as real individuals, not just as famous writers, but you get to see who they really are. You get to know them one-on-one, which is an amazing experience."

Fellow participant Dominick Quartuccio, a Stony Brook/Southampton MFA student, also commented on the variety of genre options, "I took the playwriting last week, I am taking memoir this week and screenwriting next week. The different perspectives are really helpful. Just being able to hear from the very people you have read for a long time talk about their work, talk about their process. The best thing to take away from this is that we are all writing and we are all doing the same thing in our own special ways."

The 2009 Southampton Writers Conference is now in the literary history books. It proved, yet again, to be a conference that had no intention of resting on its laurels, but pressed itself to challenge complacency and layer additional distinction upon its already substantial reputation. It was a conference of significant growth coupled with the challenge of continued artistic excellence, juxtaposed by the irreplaceable lost of one of its most precious and loved components, the teacher that called himself Frank McCourt. Once again, the Southampton Writers Conference has lived up to Tom Wolfe's declaration that it is, "The best conference in the country!"