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Delaware Division of the Arts

2014 Retreat Summary Page

Group of individuals from 2014 Delaware Writers Retreat

2014 Writers Retreat

Designed to encourage reflection and creativity, the 2014 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

Twenty-one writers from around the state attended the Division’s 2014 Cape Henlopen Poetry and Prose Writers Retreat from October 16-19, 2014, at the Virden Conference Center, Lewes, Delaware. Workshops were led by former Delaware Poet Laureate, JoAnn Balingit and Alice Elliott Dark, a short story author and novelist.

2014 Workshop Leaders

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JoAnn Balingit

Poetry Facilitator

JoAnn Balingit is the author of Words for House Story (2013) and Forage, awarded the 2011 Whitebird Chapbook Prize. She works as an assistant editor at YesYes Books for eBook development. Her poems and prose have appeared in Best New Poets, DIAGRAM, Harpur Palate, The Mackinac, Poets/Artists, Salt Hill, Smartish Pace, Verse Daily and elsewhere. Appointed Delaware’s Poet Laureate in 2008, JoAnn teaches poetry for schools and non-profit organizations, and for young writers coordinates the Delaware Writing Region of The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Her awards include the 2010 Global Filipino Literary Award in Poetry and fellowships from Delaware Division of the Arts, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, as well as a 2014 residency at The Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France as a Bread Loaf Bakeless fellow. 

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Alice Elliott Dark

Prose Facilitator

Alice Elliott Dark is the author of the novel, Think of England, and two collections of short stories, In The Gloaming and Naked to the Waist.  Her work has appeared in, among others, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Redbook, DoubleTake, Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards , and translated into many languages.  “In the Gloaming,” a story, was chosen by John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Stories of The Century and was made into films by HBO and Trinity Playhouse.  Her non-fiction reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and many anthologies.  She is a past recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and has been awarded Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Fellowships for residency at The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Yaddo.  She is an Assistant Professor in the MFA program and English department at Rutgers-Newark.