Jane Vandenburgh

 

The 600 acres of the SMIP Ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains — all ours for our stays

Beginning with a five-day residence at the Djerassi Resident Artists’ Program meeting at the 600 acre SMIP Ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains, seven participants will work with Jane Vandenburgh over the course of a calendar year, delivering from 20 to 30 pages of manuscript per month, receiving written notes on hardcopy and developmental aid via telephone conference.

The year concludes with another five-day residence at Djerassi in February of 2017. Working according to plan, many past participants have been able to get the better part of a draft of a book-length work on paper over the course of a calendar year.

The application process for 2017 opens in August 2016 — go to http://djerassi.org and find the drop-down under “Workshops”

Testimonials from Past Participants

Zanni Schauffler, Enterprise, Oregon

Jane Vandenburgh is the most honest and encouraging teacher I’ve ever had. She believes so completely in the ability of writing to transform people, and it does. It has for me. That kind of inspiration is infectious and absolutely exhilarating. To get to spend a year with her looking closely at my writing was a huge gift. I miss it. I want to do it again.

 

Sharon Hurd, Boise, Idaho

“I came to Jane Vandenburgh’s yearlong book-length workshop because — even after nearly 20 years of writing and rewriting a story — I still didn’t have an ending. Jane encouraged, nudged, nurtured, and held me accountable to write to the end. Along the way, she taught me to listen for as much as to write about the sound of gender and nature and race—a skill invaluable. This workshop was the biggest treat I have ever given myself, and the second guessing I had about the investment in the workshop or my own worth as a writer, Jane’s trustworthiness and mastery of the craft have vanquished. I have tremendous appreciation for Jane’s genius, her savvy, her keen ear. I would definitely do the yearlong again.”

 

Harold Chambers, Asheville, North Carolina

“Jane Vandenburgh is an astute and generous exemplar, instructor and teacher of working and writing in the long narrative. In a world that declares writing cannot be taught, she puts the lie to that notion by bringing to her students her day-to-day struggles and triumphs of her own current narrative work. She shares her work and herself with students, teaching in that best of all ways: by example. In addition, she has acquired a detailed, well thought out and highly intelligent approach to the writing process, in both a writer’s generative search for initial material, and in the more difficult search for form and structure. She encourages her students to write and to share their work, but she is not overbearing about this, as she understands well the delicacy of the writer’s psyche and of work-in-progress. She encourages stops and starts and achievement through failure. Regularly, she reminds her students that each one will write much better than he or she is capable of simply by faith in — and application to — day-to-day writing. In my year with her in our long narrative workshop I learned more about writing and the writing process than in all my decades beforehand.”