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Delaware Division of the Arts

2008 Retreat Summary Page

Group of individuals at 2008 Delaware Writers Retreat

2008 Writers Retreat

Designed to encourage reflection and creativity, the 2008 Delaware Writers Retreat provided writers with a collaborative atmosphere to write, revise, and recharge. It was a meaningful opportunity to make progress on their work while drawing inspiration from a community of peers.

More About the Retreat

Sixteen writers from around the state attended the Division’s 2008 Poetry and Fiction Writers Retreat at Cape Henlopen from October 23-26, 2008 at the Biden Center, Cape Henlopen State Park, Lewes, Delaware. Workshops were led by former Delaware Poet Laureate, JoAnn Balingit novelist, Dr. Cruce Stark.

2008 Workshop Leaders

Portrait of a woman with long straight dark hair, wearing hoop earrings, layered necklaces, and a black floral top. She faces the camera with a slight smile against a plain light gray background.

JoAnn Balingit

Poetry Facilitator

JoAnn Balingit is author of Your Heart and How it Works (Spire Press, 2009) and is Delaware’s current poet laureate, appointed in 2008. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Harpur Palate, Smartish Pace, Best New Poets 2007, DIAGRAM.2, on Verse Daily and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships from the Delaware Division of the Arts and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and was a 2009 MAAF creative fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. JoAnn lived abroad for several years in Morocco and Portugal, countries where two of her four children were born. From 1990-2000 she was a librarian and technology advocate in the public schools. She holds masters degrees in literature from UC Irvine and in library science from Indiana University. She earned a doctorate in Education from the University of Delaware in 2008.

ortrait of a bearded man speaking at a microphone, wearing a textured blazer with a blue-and-yellow boutonniere pinned to the lapel. He appears seated at an event or panel, with a name tag visible on his jacket and a plain light background behind him.

Dr. Cruce Stark

Prose Facilitator

Bio not provided.