Nebraska native Willa Cather got the idea for her historical novel Death Comes for the Archbishop in 1925 while holed up at La Fonda, just down the street from St. Francis Cathedral, which was built by the pioneer Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy. The archbishop was a model for Cather's novel's protagonist, and a 1908 biography about Lamy's vicar, the Rev. Joseph Machebeuf, offered details about the history of the Catholic Church and the experiences of its priests in territorial New Mexico, which Cather considered some of the region's most interesting topics.

Cather didn't come to New Mexico to develop a writing style or to be part of a literary movement. Like many of the early writers associated with the state, she was an established author before she first visited Santa Fe in 1912. She came here, as writers do today, to draw inspiration from the region's unusual landscape, history, and culture.

Goldberg variations

In a quiet, pine-scented room, window light falls on a handful of seated people. Some have their heads bowed over notebooks, others sit cross-legged on chairs, and some stare serenely into the middle distance. Outside, a few people practice "walking meditation" as they make their way toward the room with long, considered steps, concentrating on the sound of their feet crunching on gravel. This is day two of the Zen-inspired beginning-writers' workshop arranged by Natalie Goldberg at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, and already the participants seem blissed out.

"It's backed by 2,000 years of watching the mind. That's why it's so strong," Goldberg said about how she integrates Zen practices with her teachings. For her, there is no separation between Zen and writing. "Your tools of writing are pen, paper, and the human mind," she said. "The more you sit, the more you have a relationship with your human mind, and the deeper you have a relationship with your basic tool. We're always running after things. Slow walking gives a chance for the world to come home to you. Writing is 90 percent listening, slowing down, and taking things in."

This morning Goldberg leads
a group of about 20 participants in an inspirational discussion on the nature of writing and then offers people a chance to read something aloud that they have written at the workshop. Different levels of skill are obvious, and a few participants break down in tears. Goldberg then gives three 10-minute writing assignments, followed by small-group huddles in which the participants read their work aloud to one another.

"My workshops are backed by practice," Goldberg said. "We do a lot of actual writing in the classroom." Goldberg runs workshops all over the country, but the Mabel Dodge Luhan House is her main campus. "I did my first writing workshop on the same road — Morada Lane — in 1974, in someone's living room." From there she wrote Writing Down the Bones, the 1986 writing guide that catapulted her to writing-guru fame.

For about 20 years, people have enthusiastically attended her "Writing Down the Bones" workshops, which cater to writers at different levels of the craft. This week's is focused on beginning writers from all over the country, as well as from Canada and Europe. Some writers are on their fourth or fifth visit with Goldberg. A few have become disciples
of sorts. "If they keep coming back, I have a relationship with them," she said. "They really care about writing."

Simple, tasty meals evocative of the region and made from scratch fuel brains and encourage bonding — except at breakfast, which is taken in a monkish silence. "When young Jewish kids first go to the yeshiva to learn Hebrew and Jewish studies, they're given a little taste of honey so they will always associate learning with sweetness," Goldberg said. "I like to do that with my students, so they fall in love" with writing.

Lunch is followed by time for reflection, reading, writing, or walking meditation. Then the afternoon is taken up with a workshop on grief and an analysis of two books about Northern New Mexico — Cather's classic Death Comes for the Archbishop and Goldberg's Banana Rose — to examine how different writers at different times can write about the same place. "People come, and they don't read," Goldberg said. "They don't realize how basic reading is to writing, and so they always get assigned books to read, and we study the minds of the authors. I say, 'The authors are your teachers.'"

Reverence is in the air at dinner, with people chatting about the walk they will take together that evening. There's not much talk about writing, although some people are jotting down thoughts. Instead of distracting her from her own writing, facilitating workshops "juices" her, Goldberg said. "Writing is such a lonely thing. Here I get to share what I've learned in my own writing."

Goldberg estimates that 50 percent of the people who take her workshops continue to write afterward. "I allow them to have confidence in their own experience," she said. "That it's rich enough to write about, a truth in their own mind. I give them the tools to continue: how to write and how to continue with it."

For more information on Goldberg's workshops, call 505-758-8456 or 1-800-846-2235 or visit nataliegoldberg.com/workshop.html.

Writers of the purple sage

It's the first day of the Taos Summer Writers Conference, and writers of all sorts are scuttling around Taos' historic Sagebrush Inn and Conference Center in search of their workshop rooms. The excitement is palpable. The 10-year-old conference, organized by The University of New Mexico, has grown into a 10-day affair, with weekend, weeklong, and master-class workshops in creative writing and the business aspects of writing. And just when the participants think it's time to take a deep breath and chill, there are readings and special events to keep them even busier.

Director Sharon Oard Warner, a professor of English and creative writing at UNM, said the conference began as a collaboration between UNM's creative-writing program and the UNM-owned D.H. Lawrence Ranch. "Part of what we have to offer in New Mexico is the history, the landscape, and the culture, and it seemed to me that UNM was making very little use of our assets," she said.

Participants last summer came from all over the U.S., Canada, Australia, and even Dubai, but more than a third came from New Mexico. "I want this to be an event that serves the writing community and the state," Oard Warner said. "Even though people come from all around the country and all around the world, I think that the event should be a public service."

Workshops on poetry, novel writing, children's stories, memoir writing, screenwriting, playwriting, crime writing, and nonfiction writing share the agenda with workshops on publishing and manuscript production. Oard Warner said she likes to try a new thing each year, even if it doesn't work out. "One of the things that I do want is to offer a cross-section of different kinds of writing," she said.

In "The Centrifugal Poem," Valerie Martínez's workshop for intermediate and advanced poets, 12 people sit intently around a large table in a small corner of a large, otherwise deserted conference room. In the middle of the table is a pile of magazines to be used in writing exercises. Martínez, Santa Fe's poet laureate, dashes through exercises: in one, participants examine poems from Emily Dickinson; in another they write one line about a magazine image. All these tasks come together by the end of the week as poets break free of the impulse to create the same poem over and over and instead expand, provoke, and surprise.

Martínez strikes up an immediate rapport with the writers, which pleases Oard Warner. "I want faculty that people want to be around," she said. "In [other workshops] there's a feel that the participants are coming to revere writers who have paid their dues. I really don't want that kind of atmosphere at Taos, and I've worked very hard to hire people who will be involved with the participants, down-to-earth people who think of themselves as writers like everybody else is."

There's a real feeling of community among the participants. "Inclusive rather than exclusive is very important to me, and that's why we also have beginning, intermediate, and advanced classes," Oard Warner said. "We have no application process. If you're interested in writing, then I'm interested in helping out."

In the afternoon Greg Glazner, a professor of English and creative writing at the College of Santa Fe, begins a weeklong master-class workshop aimed at poets interested in revising a poetry manuscript. The two participants get all of Glazner's attention, beginning with a pep talk about not giving up; it took Glazner 10 years, after all, to publish his first collection of poems, From the Iron Chair. The three analyze the placement of poems in published books by Dana Levin and Robert Hass.

According to Oard Warner, more than half of last summer's participants had attended previous conferences — including a woman who has been to all 10 of them. Oard Warner tries to feature a past participant who has recently published a book and have him or her do a reading. "Our business is to serve writers and celebrate their successes; that includes the participants and the faculty members," she said. "That's the best atmosphere to have people working, where we are all rooting for each other."

Oard Warner sees a parallel between the Taos Society of Artists and writers in the Southwest. "I think writers are inspired by the Southwest," she said. "I think Taos is magical. I see all of us being interested in depicting the place, but stylistically and subject-matter-wise, we all go about it very differently."

For more information on the conference, visit unm.edu/~taosconf or call 505-277-5572.

Harvesting words — and mysteries

Perhaps the most famous of all of the New Mexico writing conferences, and certainly one of the top 30 mystery writers' conferences, is the Tony Hillerman Writers Conference. The conference is named for the award-winning author who died in October 2008 and whose mystery tales are set in the Southwest. It is produced by Wordharvest, a writing-workshop organization founded by Hillerman's daughter, Anne, and Jean Schaumberg. For the past five years, the conference has been held in November and has featured a mix of workshops and panel discussions.

Wordharvest's first forays into writing workshops began with a series of one-day sessions in subjects as diverse as travel writing, children's-book writing, and screenwriting. "We have five or six in the winter/spring and then five or six in the summer," Schaumberg said. These workshops are intimate gatherings that take place in the homes of Santa Fe writers. But the jewel in the Wordharvest crown is the Tony Hillerman Writers Conference.

As part of the conference, Wordharvest has established the Hillerman-McGarrity Scholarship Fund, which supports two students enrolled in the creative-writing program at the College of Santa Fe. Author Michael McGarrity had suggested that a scholarship be established to honor Hillerman's contributions to students and writers of New Mexico.

The conference also has two contests: the Hillerman Prize for the First Novel, sponsored by St. Martin's Press, and the Tony Hillerman Mystery Short Story Contest, sponsored by Cowboys & Indians magazine. Winners of the awards are honored at a conference banquet.

Although the conference attracts mainly mystery writers, it features workshops about the business of writing designed to appeal to all kinds of writers: how to write a successful query letter, how to hook publishers, editing, and marketing. Participants also can sign up for private appointments with agents, a bonus for the more than 150 budding writers who normally attend.

For more information on Wordharvest programs, visit wordharvest.com or call 471-1565.

And then there were more ...

Besides these major workshops, there are others that last only a few hours or a few weeks.

SouthWest Writers, located in Albuquerque, offers professional critique services, writing contests, and workshops on the business of writing and other subjects. Santa Fe author and educator Pat Shapiro offers yoga and writing workshops that fuse both disciplines over a day. Recursos de Santa Fe produces conferences of all kinds, including the Santa Fe Writers' Conference held for four days every July, and it also runs the Southwest Literary Center, where more informal workshops can be found. Local writer Lisa Dale Norton offers "workshops for hire," mostly focused on memoir. And Ghost Ranch in Abiquiú offers a variety of workshops, both sacred and secular, in many genres.

This article continues next week, with a look at writing programs at local colleges.