On Sunday, March 6th, Zen priest Catherine Gammon will be visiting BZC to lead a one-day writing workshop, from 9am to 5pm.
Catherine is a Soto Zen priest in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. She was ordained by Tenshin Reb Anderson Roshi in 2005, and received precepts as a layperson in 1998 from Rev. Shohaku Okumura. She has been in residential training at San Francisco Zen Center since 2000 and served as Shuso, or head monk, for the Spring 2010 practice period at Green Dragon Temple/Green Gulch Farm.
Before her residential training, Catherine wrote fiction and taught creative writing in the MFA program of the University of Pittsburgh. Her novel Isabel Out of the Rain was published in 1991 by Mercury House, and her shorter fiction appeared in many literary journals between 1977 and 2000. In January 2011 she returned to Pitt for a term as visiting professor in the MFA program.
Here is Catherine’s description of the retreat:
Susan Sontag used the phrase “writing as a wisdom project” when commenting on one writer’s approach to autobiography as an occasion for deep self-study. In this retreat we expand on this idea to bring self-study to our practice of imaginative writing, with an emphasis on fiction and poetry. From the position of understanding our practice as writers as an opportunity to receive, imagine, study and reveal our own present, dependently arising body and mind, we write and listen together, using prompts as well as free writing, and reading and responding to one another’s words. Our work is quite intimate and offers everyone opportunities for participation and discussion. Considerations of form, both in literary practice and in dharma practice, play a part in our discussions. The day is structured to include informal periods of reflection and formal periods of silent meditation as practiced in the Zen tradition. Meditation instruction will be offered as needed.
The workshop is appropriate for anyone interested in the practice of writing and self-study: experienced writers and beginners, experienced Zen practitioners and beginners.
The day will go from 9am to 5pm and there will be a break for lunch. (Participants may bring a bag lunch to eat at the Zen Center.) The cost of the workshop is $60. Please send in your payment by February 15th to reserve a space. Checks can be made out to Brooklyn Zen Center and dropped off at the center or mailed to:
Brooklyn Zen Center
505 Carroll Street, Suite 2A
Brooklyn, NY 11215
If you’d like to sign up or if you have any questions, please use the contact form found here.
(Photo by Marcia Lieberman.)
