Instructor: Christopher Bakken
Thasos and Thessaloniki, Greece
June/July: 2014
Join a small community of writers for a month of literary exchanges and off-the-beaten track travel in Greece. After a few days exploring Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, the course will move to a remote fishing village on the island of Thasos. Our pension overlooks three beaches and a peninsula bristling with archeology, including a temple of the Dioskuri, the ruins of a third century Christian basilica, and a Roman marble quarry. It is a local food paradise: to supply their restaurant, the owners of our pension catch their own fish each morning, raise their own lamb and goats, and grow many of their own vegetables. Dishes are cooked each morning in a massive wood oven.
Scroll through previous blog posts for photographs.
We will read several books and essays together and will offer one another feedback in a workshop format. Some participants come with projects already underway and others rely on the island to trigger new writing. Inspiration will not be in short supply. Visiting writers and faculty will offer readings in the archeological site on weeknights and Wednesday nights will feature local musicians and dancing around the olive tree at the pension. In addition, excursions around the island will allow participants to glimpse traditional island agriculture and gastronomy. These might include:
● artisanal bread in the village of Theologos
● wildflower island honey
● fishing off the whirlpools of Bambouras
● preparing traditional sourdough with wild yeast starter
● octopus hunting in Aliki bay
● cooking demonstrations in the restaurant of Pension Archontissa
Other workshops running simultaneously:
Carolyn Forché: Poetry
Jayne Anne Phillips: Fiction
Natalie Bakopoulos: Memoir
About the instructor:
Christopher Bakken is the author of the memoir Honey, Olives, Octopus: Adventures at the Greek Table (University of California Press), as well as two books of poetry: Goat Funeral and After Greece, for which he was awarded the 2001 T.S. Eliot Prize in Poetry. He is also co-translator of The Lions' Gate: Selected Poems of Titos Patrikios.
In 2001, he appeared on a “Chef on a Shoestring” segment on the CBS Saturday Morning Early Show, cooking Greek-inspired dishes. Cooking Light magazine featured his course “Eating Poetry” (about the intersections between literature and food) in an article in 2002, and in 2004 he won Food & Wine magazine’s “Best Burger” contest, which led to his recipe appearing in a 2005 issue, as well as in that year’s Best Food & Wine Recipes of 2005 volume. Excerpts from Honey, Olives, Octopus have appeared serially in Odyssey magazine, and elsewhere.
His awards include The T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize, a Fulbright Fellowship in American Studies, and the McGinnis-Ritchie Award for Nonfiction from The Southwest Review. Bakken received his M.F.A. in poetry from the Writing Seminars at Columbia University and his Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing at University of Houston. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in places like The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Gettysburg Review, Boulevard, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, The Hudson Review, and Modern Poetry in Translation. He is an Associate Professor of English at Allegheny College.
Write Christopher Bakken at cbakken@allegheny.edu if you want more information.
