Santiago Writers & NAWG

Santiago Writers & the 2012 National Association of Writing Groups Anthology Competition

Comments on the winning entry: from EDWG (East Dulwich Writing Group)

“Perspectives by Santiago Writers, was the hands-down winner. What we loved about this collection was the sheer reading pleasure it provided. The writing in all the short stories and poems was polished and highly engaging. There was a variety of voices, from writers of all ages and differing degrees of experience. This was not a collection by a group of professional writers but, from the quality of the work, it could have been. There were stories and poems that lingered long in the reader’s mind. Much of the writing was beautifully evocative of place, with powerful sensory imagery and description ripe with emotional weight. In other words, we loved it.”

An important part of the success of the Santiago Writing Group since 2005, has been the local workshops led by professional Canadian and English writers visiting Los Parronales. Living rather isolated (writing) lives, the annual January sessions have been and both utterly instructive and inspiring for group members honing their craft.

Latest opportunity to join us… see January 2013 details below.

Email: motocad@rogers.com for details

Wish List

The only thing on my Holiday Wish List besides a tableful of people is a new bedside table.

Publications of Los Parronales' recent facilitators, Don McKay, Barry Dempster, Stan Dragland, and Lorri Neilson Glenn, are piled on top of those by Ronna Bloom, Beth Follett, and Sylvia Adams. Volumes by participants, Ruth Roach Pierson, Sheila Stewart, Merle Amodeo, Shane Joseph, Elizabeth Greene, and Barbara Myers, plus their previous publications are finally threatening the slender legs of my current stand. A trip to a furniture store or antique market will sort that, but if you'd like your tome to rest with the best - we still have spaces in January 2013 for the wonderful workshop with John Steffler and Susan Gillis!

 

Email NOW for full details.

Our Brochure Online

 

Grapes of Wrath?

On February 16th 1993 - her 19th birthday - a visitor at Los Parronales spent three hours in a fridge.

The grape harvest was in full swing and we were exporting our first crop of Thompson seedless grapes. It was all hands on deck, or rather in the barn, the temporary packing shed. That day, sticky and aching after hours spent filling cardboard boxes with juicy bunches, we sighed with relief, as the truck swayed out of the gate. The call came an hour later. 150 of our boxes were missing plastic liners. If we didn’t drive over to the company plant to fix them, the delivery couldn’t be accepted.

             It took three of us, wrapped in coats, leggings, hats and gloves, three hours to do that job. 180 minutes, locked in a giant fridge, bent over a long table, opening, emptying, inserting, filling, opening, emptying… to repack those luscious clusters, teeth chattering, feet frozen, fingers numb.

            We don’t treat visitors like that nowadays. In the Chilean summer of 2013, our guests will write, read, relax, walk and swim. We don’t expect help in the vineyard, except that they wander through and maybe bless the crop with a poem. (We did stop on our return to treat our guest to supper with a spongy, lucuma-filled birthday cake.)

Scroll down for details of the latest writing retreat.

Hearing Neruda in Toronto

Imagine, a Q Space reading event on College at Borden on Friday evening, hearing a

Neruda love poem and staring at the niveous, foam-crested waves crashing

over the obsidian rocks at Isla Negra… where we go every year with

Los Parronales workshop participants, to tour of one of the three treasure-filled homes of Chilean, Nobel prize-winning poet, Pablo Neruda.

Always a satiating and enthralling experience.

Join us! The trip to Isla Negra is scheduled for

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013

Steven McCabe's illustration of Tonight I Can Write

 

Los Parronales Writing Workshop       Jan13th—26th, 2013

led by John Steffler and Susan Gillis

Cost:  An all-inclusive daily rate of C$160 per person, single room. C$130 sharing C$95, accompanying person sharing, no workshop. Plus, return airfare to Chile (courtesy airport pick up & drop-off).

To do: Read, write, swim, walk, hike, watch birds, daily. Go horseback riding on Sunday.

Meals: Breakfast: Buffet. Lunch: local soups & salads. Dinner: meat, fish, veg & salads, Chilean wine.

Day Trips:  2 full, 2-3 half-day outings to Valparaiso and Pablo Neruda’s Isla Negra & port house. Santiago museums, Plaza de Armas, the Bohemian Bellavista district and Neruda’s town house.

Workshop sessions start Monday. Arriving a day before is ideal. Be ‘flexible’ an extra night may work out cheaper on the AC schedule.

For more information and a reservation form.

Email Susan Siddeley: motocad@rogers.com    

Walking with Ivan

Normally, Ivan entertains with a full-dress horse routine at the end of January’s writing workshop. Today, he and I are walking up our hill. As we climb, trailed by Sofi (mongrel dog beloved of visitors), his sharp 12-year-old eyes soon spy lizards darting between the rocks, clumps of huilli lilies among the deadwood under the greening bushes, and tiny wrens guarding nests in the espino. As he picks the easiest way along barely discernable rabbit paths, he points out tiny flowers and button mushrooms.
Above, where I make out circling hawks, he spots a pair of eagles, identifiable he assures me, by their soaring glide and white undersides. Further up, even I can’t miss the bleached ribs and skulls of long dead cattle scattered on the rocky slope. To catch my breath, I stare down the gully where after wet winters a cascade runs, and I tell him I once paddled there with his sister.
All about the air is alive with the rustling and twittering of spring life and when we finally sit on an east-facing rock on the hill’s broad shoulder, the snow-dusted slopes of the Andes shimmer in the distance. On our way down, I wonder aloud about the absence of shrieking lapwings. And Ivan says they’ve retreated to the lower fields, where the earth is soft after the rains, and worms abound. He says there’s a flock of ducks there too. I’d noticed the glaze of the flooded fields, but not the ducks.

Join us in January, in full summer. The green on the hills will have faded, but the garden will be full of roses and morning glory, the patio will be shady and the pool cool. Books and poems wait everywhere and Ivan will be around to identify local flora and fauna, dance the Cueca and demonstrate horsemanship.

Workshop details below.

Springtime at Los Parronales

After a wet winter....