Unusual conference-type things

The Hedgebrook Foundation, which sponsors all-expenses-paid residencies for women writers, has a new (new to me, at least) program of small workshops with writers like Jane Hamilton, Carolyn Forche, and Theresa Rebeck, each at a different time of year.

It sounds pretty great -- seven days in your own little cottage on Whidbey Island, WA, and a five-day master class in fiction, memoir or poetry. It's expensive ($2000-$2500) but the workshops are limited to six participants, and the fees help support the regular residencies.

And Crazyhorse Journal runs the Crazyhorse/Tupelo Press Publishing Institute at the College of Charleston in June. It looks like a kind of brief internship in which students read manuscripts, learn about the editorial and publishing process, learn about judging a contest, and have one of their own manuscripts reviewed by an editor.

Crazyhorse is one of my favorite literary mags -- I enjoy their fiction and poetry sensibility, and it's nice looking, too -- the cover art is beautiful, and it's a nice hefty size and shape.