The Mark Program

MEET THE 2012 FICTION/NONFICTION MARK PARTICIPANTS!

Shanna Mahin is a high school dropout who rallied late and has become optimistic about a strong finish, due in no small part to a 2008 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Colony Fellowship, and a few summer residencies. She's currently working on completing her memoir, tentatively titled The Concerns of the Bourgeoisie. She asks that you make note of the word “tentatively.”
 

 

Monica Carter, a Milwaukee native, currently resides in Los Angeles and was a 2010 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow and a 2010 Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging GLBT Voice. Her fiction has appeared in Strange Cargo: An Emerging Voices Anthology, Black Clock, The Rattling Wall, and in the forthcoming issue of Bloom. She is currently working on her novel, The Affair of 1936. She also curates Salonica, a website dedicated to world literature.

 

 

Carl Peel was born in Santa Monica, California, and currently lives in Los Angeles. He received a BA from UCLA in English literature and was a 1999 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow. His fiction has appeared in BeWhich Magazine, Newport Review, and in the anthologies Wild Things: Domestic and Otherwise and Experienced: Rock Music Tales of Fact & Fiction. He is currently working on a novel, Lions & Ghosts, an early draft of which was shortlisted for the James Jones First Novel Award and was a semifinalist for the Virginia Center for the Book’s Great American Book Award.

 

About

The Mark is a rigorous manuscript finishing school for Emerging Voices alumni. Each year the program offers two cycles, one for Fiction/Nonfiction and one for Poetry. Three to four applicants are chosen for each cycle. Project Defense, Mid-Term Review, and Final Review are all mandatory components of the program.

Visit the Mark Blog for an in-depth look at the program.

Requirements

The Mark is seeking program applicants whose manuscripts are either completed or near completion.

Page requirements:
Fiction/Non-fiction: 120 pages

Poetry: 40 pages

Please note: Full manuscript will be required for faculty review before interview date.

  • The Mark is an Emerging Voices alumni program. All applicants must have successfully completed an Emerging Voices Fellowship.
  • Patron PEN Membership is mandatory for all program participants.
  • Mark participants must live in Los Angeles or within reasonable driving distance of the city, allowing them to attend classes and advisor meetings without complication.

Program Components

Project Defense will allow Mark faculty and PEN staff to learn more about the participants' projects. Participants should be prepared to answer a series of detailed questions regarding the creation and crafting of their manuscript, as well as their future goals for the project. Following the Defense, the Mark faculty and PEN staff will prescribe goals for the manuscript and a workshop schedule specific to each participant. Informed by the Defense, the participant will then be prepared to enter the Workshop with clear and focused goals to complete the manuscript.


Workshop will meet every other week, for eighteen weeks. Workshop sessions are three hours in length. Mark Participants are required to attend all nine Workshop meetings. In addition to revising their own manuscripts, Mark participants will read their colleagues work and provide thoughtful written critique each Workshop. Workshops will adhere to the schedule developed during the Project Defense stage.

Mid-Term Review All Mark participants will be scheduled for reviews with the Mark program faculty. Reviews will re-address the goals set out in the Project Defense and examine the participants' progress.

Final Review The Mark faculty and PEN staff will be in attendance at the Final Review. The participants will present their projects and a discussion will follow. The Mark faculty will play a large role in this review, especially in regards to publishing and query advice.

The Mark Blog Throughout the 18-week program, participants must contribute once a week to the Mark Blog. Hosted on PEN Center USA’s website, the blog gives the Mark Program a broader reach into the writing community. Mark participants will be asked to blog about each program element and about their experiences in the program. The Mark Blog schedule will be distributed at the Defense/Orientation and will extend through the Final Review.

Program Faculty

Fiction/Nonfiction Faculty (2011/2012):

Alan Watt is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and publisher. The 90-Day Novel, Watt’s nonfiction guide to writing, was published in 2010. His novel Diamond Dogs (Little, Brown) was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and was recognized in the New York Times list of “New and Notable Books.” Diamond Dogs has won numerous awards, including France’s 2004 Prix Printemps. Watt recently adapted Diamond Dogs for the French film company Quad. In 2002, Watt founded LA Writers’ Lab to help writers of all levels unlock the story within. His 90-Day Novel workshops in Los Angeles are now taught online to writers worldwide. Writers Tribe Books, his publishing venture, will release four works of literary fiction in the winter of 2012.


Samantha Dunn is the author of Failing Paris (Toby Press), a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Fiction Award in 2000; and the memoirs Not By Accident: Reconstructing a Careless Life (Henry Holt & Co.), a BookSense 76 pick; and Faith in Carlos Gomez: A Memoir of Salsa, Sex and Salvation (Henry Holt & Co.). Samantha’s work is anthologized in several places, including the short story anthology Women on the Edge: Writing from Los Angeles (Toby Press), which Dunn co-edited with writer Julianne Ortale. Dunn’s essays have appeared in numerous national publications including the Los Angeles Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Ms.; Redbook; and Shape. In 2000, Dunn received the Maggie Award for Best Personal Essay in a Consumer Publication. A widely published journalist, Dunn’s bylines are regularly featured in InStyle, Glamour, SELF, Men’s Health, and a variety of other consumer magazines. A writer-in-residence at the New York State Summer Writers Institute for many years, Dunn currently teaches at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Dunn lives in Southern California with her husband, musician/politico Jimmy Camp, and their son Ben.

Poetry Faculty (2011/2012):

Anna Journey is the author of the collection, If Birds Gather Your Hair for Nesting (University of Georgia Press, 2009), selected by Thomas Lux for the National Poetry Series. Her poems are published in American Poetry Review, FIELD, Kenyon Review, and Shenandoah, and her essays appear in At Length, Blackbird, Notes on Contemporary Literature, Parnassus, and Plath Profiles. Journey holds a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Houston, and she currently teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California. She recently received a fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia 
Earhart (Persea 2005) and Apocalyptic Swing (Persea 2009), which was
a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Award. She is the recipient
 of numerous awards and fellowships including a Stegner Fellowship and
 Jones Lectureship from Stanford University, a Rona Jaffe Woman
Writer's Award and a fellowship to Civitella di Ranieri in Umbria. Her 
poems have been featured in the Washington Post and on Garrison 
Keillor's Poet's Almanac and in numerous journals. She is the poetry editor for The Los Angeles Review of Books and is on the advisory 
board of The Rumpus' Poetry Book Club.  Along with gallerist Heather 
Taylor she curates the acclaimed reading series, Eating Our Words
 (eatingrwords.com). She lives in Los Angeles.

 

Fiction/Nonfiction Faculty (2010/2011):

Diana WagmanDiana Wagman is a novelist and screenwriter. Her first book, Skin Deep, was heralded by the New York Times as a “brilliant debut.” Her second novel, Spontaneous, won the 2001 USA PEN West Award for Fiction. Bump, her last novel, was short-listed for the Dublin Literary Prize. Most recently, she has published short stories in Los Angeles Noir, Black Clock, and the premiere issue of Electric Literature alongside Michael Cunningham and Jim Shepard. As a screenwriter, Wagman wrote DELIVERING MILO (2001) starring Albert Finney and Bridget Fonda. Her reviews and essays have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The LA Weekly, and Poets & Writers. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

Mary OtisMary Otis is an award winning writer whose short story collection Yes, Yes, Cherries was published in 2007 by Tin House Books. She has had stories and essays published in Best New American Voices, Los Angeles Times, Tin House, Berkeley Literary Journal, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, and Santa Monica Review. Her writing has recently been anthologized in Woof: Fiction Writers on Dogs (Viking) and Tales of Sex and Love (Tin House). Her story "Pilgrim Girl" received an honorable mention for a Pushcart Prize, and her story "Unstruck" was cited in 100 Distinguished Stories in the Best American Short Stories 2006. She is a Walter Dakin Fellow, and in 2009 was invited by the NEA in collaboration with la Fil to attend the Guadalajara Book Festival as a fiction writer. Originally from the Boston area, Mary is a fiction professor in the UC Riverside Low-Residency MFA Program where she is part of the core faculty.

2011 Mark Poetry Participant

 

Mehnaz Turner was born in Pakistan and raised in Southern California. She holds degrees from the University of Arizona, The University of Texas at Austin, and UC Santa Barbara. She is a 2009 Emerging Voices Fellow in Poetry. Her short story, "The Alphabet Workbook," appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in publications such as The Journal of Pakistan Studies, The Pedestal Magazine, and An Anthology of California Poets. An English teacher, she lives in Southern California.

A note on the Poetry cycle: The Mark will not offer a Poetry cycle this year, as we are interested in instituting some exciting changes in that genre. Look for a Mark Poetry cycle in 2013.

Apply


 The application period for the next Fiction/Nonfiction cycle opens September 1, 2012.

 

 

 

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