When Kyle Semmel moved from Milwaukee to became executive director of Rochester’s Writers & Books last year, he quickly honed in on a hidden treasure: Gell: A Finger Lakes Creative Retreat.
“When I saw the space I thought it was just a lovely, beautiful place,” said Semmel about the nonprofit’s secluded satellite location in Naples, Ontario County. “The unique thing about Writers & Books is that we have this unique space — one urban and one rural. I knew I wanted to do more there.”
Semmel, a Livingston County native, decided a perfect way to showcase Gell would be an intensive “summer writing camp” experience for adults.
Three Saturdays this July, Writers & Books will offer daylong workshops on the bucolic, 29-acre property that was gifted by the late Dr. Kenneth Gell, a former teacher in the Rochester City School District, and his late wife, Geraldine Gell, in the early 1990s.
“They wanted the space to be used for artists and writers,” Semmel said. “It’s a beautiful place where you can get away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Writers can be absorbed in their craft without the normal distractions of everyday life.”
Each workshop will focus on a different genre (fiction, poetry and non-fiction). They all are selective and require an application with submission of work. Writers can apply for admission to one or more of the workshops (deadline to apply is June 19).
In selecting the faculty for the intimately sized workshops, Semmel canvassed the region to find a “rich variety of voices.” He was able to assemble a distinguished group of writers and professors.
The faculty he selected are: Ralph Black, Lytton Smith, JR Fenn, Sejal Shah, Stephen J. West, Kristen Gentry, Rachel Hall, Anne Panning, Stephen Schottenfeld and Sarah Freligh.
Freligh was a student at a Writers & Books masters class at Gell back in 1998, and she still keeps in touch with some of the writers she met there.
“Gell is a lovely place for an instructor, but it’s an even better place for a student,” said Freligh, who earned a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2009. “Unless you’re in a graduate writing program or something like that, it’s very hard to find your tribe. Intensive workshops are wonderful for that reason.”
Shah, who teaches creative nonfiction and fiction at Writers & Books, the University of Rochester and privately, attended several intensive writing workshops around the country as a student even after she had received her MFA in creative writing and worked full time as a professor at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City.
She encourages both emerging writers and those already established in the field to carve out the time and make the investment to attend an intensive writing retreat.
“It gives you the time and place to be a student,” Shah said. “Having that space where your work is your writing — and that is all you’re doing — is important. You can get a lot done in a day if you can clear your space.”
Shah, like Freligh, also notes the value of studying at a place close to home to make connections to a local community of writers and to experience studying with faculty and writers who may not normally offer classes outside their institutions or at all.
Gell is close to Rochester (50 miles), yet people who have spent time there say it doesn’t necessarily feel that way.
“It’s nearby, but enough of a drive away that it gives you a sense you’re out of town,” Shah said.
Writers & Books hopes local and out-of-town attendees to these and other programs at Gell will consider making a weekend out of it.
Organizers have partnered with several Finger Lakes bed-and-breakfasts to provide discount rates for lodging for Gell attendees. Participating bed-and-breakfasts include Mountain Horse Farm and Another World Bed & Breakfast, both in Naples.
If You (Want to) Go
What: Writers & Books Gell Summer Intensive workshops series.
Details: Attendance is by application only. Prospective attendees must submit 8-10 pages of their best written work to submissions@wab.org (include “Gell Summer Intensive” in the subject line) by June 19. Applicants will be notified of acceptance by June 26. There is no fee to apply.
When: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. July 8 (poetry), July 22 (nonfiction) or July 29 (fiction).
Where: Gell: A Finger Lakes Creative Retreat, 6581 West Hollow Rd. Naples, Ontario County.
Cost: $320 general public (which includes an individual membership to Writers & Books), $280 Writers & Books members. Partial scholarships are available.
For more information: call (585) 473-2590 or visit wab.org/classes-workshops/gell-summer-intensive/.
