The Heart & Soul of TWC: A Profile of Sunil Freeman

The Heart & Soul of TWC: A Profile of Sunil Freeman
by Jason DeYoung

Though he wasn’t there at The Writer’s Center’s (TWC) founding, Sunil Freeman has been with the organization longer than any other staff member—26 years! He is often described as TWC’s “institutional memory.” Hard working, modest, and giving, Sunil is perhaps the quintessence of TWC.

Sunil has lived most of his life in Maryland, but spent some years in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and India as a child. He graduated from University of Maryland, College Park,
in 1978. While there, he majored in journalism and wrote for The Diamondback, the university’s newspaper. He started taking workshops at TWC in 1985 and was hired in 1986.

When I asked him how he found out about the Center, he said his Aunt Grace (who later became the Poet Laureate of South Carolina) gently encouraged him to take a workshop after reading some of his poems. Sunil found TWC through word-of-mouth and he started taking workshops,
first with such legendary workshop leaders as Ann Darr and Rod Jellema, and then later with the wonderfully talented William O’Sullivan and Cathy Fink. Sunil says in The Writer’s Center he “found people who were serious about writing, but who didn’t take themselves too seriously.”

Sunil’s publications include two books of poems, Surreal Freedom Blues (1999) and That Would Explain the Violinist (1993), and numerous poems, essays, and reviews in various literary journals.

Sunil is currently TWC’s assistant director, in charge of off-site workshops at satellite venues and the Open Door Reading Series, which he calls the “celebration” of the hard work that goes on at TWC. He also oversees TWC’s special projects, such as the NEA-funded “Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience.” Over the years he has been the managing editor of Poet Lore, the bookstore manager, and the programs director. “But I was first hired
to do phototypesetting of literary journals and books.”

Sunil says what he likes best about working at TWC is the interaction with the workshop leaders. “They are the heart and soul of TWC. They are such a talented, accomplished group of people and that’s a honor to work with them.”

It’s hard to tease Sunil and TWC apart. While talking to him, you learn that an important part of his character is the sense of accomplishment he gets from helping lead this well-oiled organization. He is particularly proud of inviting Stanley Plumly and Robert Bausch to lead workshops.

When I asked him what people don’t know about TWC, he said, “I think of just how much work goes on behind the scenes to make things run smoothly. I think an apt comparison is what you sometimes hear about musicians. There are very talented guitarists who make their playing
look like it’s effortless, when in fact there’s a good deal of work that goes into it. There are a lot of conversations, emails, and thinking that take place behind the scenes [at TWC] to ensure that workshop participants, and those attending events, are able to focus on the writing.” ¶

This profile was originally published in the summer 2012 Workshop & Event Guide.

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Jason DeYoung is a former Writer’s Center staff member and Managing Editor of Poet Lore. His fiction has appeared most recently in The Los Angeles Review, The Fiddleback, New Orleans Review, and Harpur Palate. His fiction will also appear in the forthcoming 2012 edition of The Best American Mystery Stories. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

photos by: Genevieve DeLeon (Freeman); Ann Compton (DeYoung)

The Writer's Toolbox: Your Writer Questions Answered

Two posts today. First, historian & TWC member David Stewart (author of Summer of 1787) answers this question:

"What role do publishers and agents play in today's world?"

Publishers and agents play two critical roles today. They serve the reading public by identifying good writers and bringing it before the world for its consideration. And they serve writers by helping to package their books and helping them figure out business and marketing challenges for which most writers have little intuitive feel. Even with the growth of digital books, there will continue to be great value in having those roles performed well.

For those of you interested in book reviews, David is one of the many forces between American Independent Review of Books, a new initiative aiming to be a force in the industry of book reviewing, locally AND nationally. Once that site goes live, I'll post a link and have a write up.

Post #2 is by Sunil Freeman, The Writer's Center's programs guru. I asked him to give a review of last Sunday's Open Door reading. Here's Sunil:

The Writer’s Center hosted a reading featuring three poets published in Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry this Sunday. We’d been looking forward to the reading for several months, having received a proposal from Pireeni Sundaralingam, one of the three co-editors. She noted that poets published in the anthology would be in Washington attending the huge gathering of writers at the Associated Writing Program conference, so an early February reading would be ideal.

She was joined by two other poets published in the anthology, Ravi Shankar and Dilruba Ahmed, who read their own work as well as several other poems from the anthology. Indivisible came into being after a literary publicist suggested that, since South Asian voices had been somewhat marginalized in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attack, it would be fitting to create a small compilation of work by poets from that part of the world. The editors quickly discovered that the project would grow into a much larger undertaking.

They also learned, to their considerable surprise, that there had never been an anthology of South Asian American poets. The call went out for submissions, and hundreds came in, from which the three editors selected 47 poets to include in the anthology. Poems came from poets they already knew and admired, from general calls for submissions, and from the editors’ extensive reading of contemporary literary journals, always looking for particularly striking work by South Asian poets.

Pireeni described how, as word about the anthology grew in the publishing world, several presses expressed an interest in publishing what has become the first ever anthology of South Asian American poetry. In the end, the University of Arkansas Press published the 288-page book. It’s an extraordinary collection, with a wide range of poetic voices. Speaking of it, Yusef Komunyakaa noted “Moments of graceful resiliency are captured again and again, and Indivisible becomes an unbroken map of lyrical recollection. There are lived lives behind these marvelous poems.”

I’ll end with just a taste of the many poems shared at the reading:

Ravi Shankar lent a comedic touch with “The Flock’s Reply to the Passionate Shepherd,” his poem inspired by Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love”:

Marooned upon this grassy knoll,
We wander lost from vale to pole,
Our woolly backs resemble thorn,
It’s been a while since we’ve been shorn . . .

From Dilruba Ahmed’s poem, “The 18th Century Weavers of Muslin Whose Thumbs Were Chopped,” inspired by Agha Shahid Ali:

What you’ve heard
of the weavers is no alchemy, it’s true:
they could have woven
you a cloth as fine as pure mist.

Beyond silk. Beyond gossamer.
Twenty yards in a matchbox
like folded air. Or fifteen
through a golden band, diaphanous. . .

And from Pireeni Sundaralingam’s “Vermont, 1885,” inspired by W. A. Bentley, who at age 19 was the first person to photograph a snowflake. Bentley later formulated the theory that no two snowflakes have the same structure:

I go home to my attic’s silence, adjust
focal length and lenses, grind out
the sea-green glass. Microscope
and camera: beneath their quiet stare
the snow disappears, is replaced
by a single, unique, six-pointed star.



# # #

March 13 Songwriters' Concert at The Writer's Center

                                           Victoria Vox

The Writer's Center and Songwriters' Association of Washington
present a Songwriters Concert
with Victoria Vox, Cathy Fink, Kevin Dudley
7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 13, 2010
at The Writer's Center
4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD
Admission: $15
Register here

It's been a few years since our assistant director Sunil Freeman took a writing workshop, but he's recently been inspired to take two that we've offered in partnership with Songwriters' Association of Washington ("SAW").  He writes here about our March 13 Songwriters Concert and the workshops.

I had a great Writer’s Center moment a few months ago, when a long-time member of the Quotidian Theatre Company accosted me, astonished, to ask, “What in the world were Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer doing at The Writer’s Center yesterday?” The evening before she had been directing people to the box office for the company’s extraordinary production of Conor McPherson’s Port Authority. She’d seen Cathy and Marcy, two-time Grammy award winning musicians who have been pillars of the songwriting community for decades, hanging out at The Writer’s Center, sitting with others in a ragged circle. People were singing, playing guitars, and clearly having a great time.

The gathering she’d seen was an unexpected bonus for those of us who were fortunate enough to take Cathy and Marcy’s first songwriting workshop at The Writer’s Center in the fall. They had suggested the informal get together as a celebration to cap off the six-week workshop. Cathy is now leading a second workshop at the Center, and we're expanding our songwriting partnership with SAW by presenting a songwriters concert featuring Cathy, Victoria Vox, and Kevin Dudley. It takes place 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 13 here at The Writer’s Center.

Here’s some information on the songwriters who will perform that evening:

Participants in Cathy’s winter songwriting workshop were fortunate to meet Victoria Vox when she lead a dynamic session with us one week when Cathy was out of town. Victoria had no idea, when she graduated from The Berklee College of Music with honors and a degree in songwriting, that one day she’d showcase her stellar mouth trumpet on the Jay Leno show. (We got to hear it briefly in the workshop when she constructed a jazzy solo over ukulele chording that sounded, to me, almost vaguely reminiscent of Django Reinhardt.)  She accompanies herself on the ukulele, tours over 125 dates a year and this year has the honor of being an Artist in Residence at the Music Center at Strathmore. She has shared the stage with and opened for Jackson Browne, Jane Weidlin (of the GoGo’s). Mindy Smith, Tom Chapin, and Jake Shimabukuro. Vox has also been awarded runner-up for “My Darlin’ Beau” (Jumping Flea) and First Place for “C’est Noye” (from her 2008 album, Chameleon) in the International Acoustic Music Awards. http://www.victoriavox.com/

Cathy Fink is a prolific songwriter with 2 Grammy Awards, 11 Grammy nominations and 50 awards from the Washington Area Music Association in bluegrass, folk and children’s music. Cathy and her music partner, Marcy Marxer, maintain an active tour schedule as folk/roots/country/swing artists and children’s/family performers. They have worked in the studio with a wide range of musicians, including Tom Paxton, Si Kahn, Pete Seeger, Riders in the Sky, Brave Combo, Mariachi Los Camperos, Mike Seeger, Patsy Montana, Pete Kennedy, and Ysaye Barnwell. Cathy’s song “Names” about the AIDS Memorial Quilt was recorded by over 20 artists in several countries and won the Mid Atlantic Song Contest in the folk category. Cathy has won the John Lennon Songwriting Contest and International Songwriting Contest. She writes songs in many styles for listeners of all ages. Cathy describes the latest Grammy nominated CD,  Banjo to Beatbox, in which she and Marcy collaborated with hip-hop artist Christylez Bacon: "We combined Appalachian sounds with urban sounds, hip-hop rhymes with traditional stories, and created a whole new sound."  http://www.cathymarcy.com/

Kevin Dudley sings about love, death, diners and most everything in between. His appearances at local open mics has built a grassroots following that made his fellow SAW (Songwriters Association of Washington) members all recommend him highly for this show. Former front man/guitarist with Atomic Hillbillies, WAMA and SAW member, Kevin received a Silver Award in the Mid-Atlantic Songwriter’s Contest with “Texarkana Diner.” www.myspace.com/kevindudley59

The concert is co-sponsored by The Writer’s Center and Songwriters' Association of Washington.

Looking Ahead

We look forward to offering a range of songwriting workshops in partnership with SAW in the future. To date our participants have included relative newcomers and singer-songwriters with years of experience as soloists and band members. Some of them, who composed tunes before writing lyrics, brought guitars to the workshop and performed their "submissions" as full-fledged songs. I only brought drafts of lyrics, but felt welcome in the group. (It helped that Cathy set some of those lyrics to music.)  As I mentioned in Carousel, if I ever seriously return to studying piano, having had very rudimentary lessons as a child, I'll title that chapter of my memoir "Re-murdering Chopin." Cathy writes of her experiences in the workshop: "I feel very lucky to 'teach' at The Writer's Center. Really, I am simply sharing some of my experiences while guiding writers to find the best in their work." If you'd like updates on future programs please visit our website, email us at postmaster@writer.org, and ask to be put on our email list.

Whiskers on Roses and Raindrops on Kittens: 20-plus years of Snapshots of Reasonably Accurate Writer’s Center Memories

Okay, so Birthday Week has begun! And we have a winner on our Monday trivia contest question: Anny Levy-Lavigne, who correctly guessed Edward P. Jones as the Pulitzer Prize-winning workshop instructor. Thank you to all who participated. Tuesday's trivia contest question is below this post by the longest-tenured employee of The Writer's Center, the "face of the Center" Sunil Freeman (who as a write this I see walking back from Trader Joe's with his trademark bag of lunch goodies). Now here's Sunil:
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An open mic at our venue on Old Georgetown Road, with Dan Johnson and a number of other very good poets reading. I’m managing editor of Poet Lore, and notice that a poet whose work we’ve accepted, who’s almost certainly fairly unknown to the assembled crowd, is on the signup sheet. I know what will happen, and just as I’d suspected, the room is transformed as Michael Davis starts to read; the air suddenly takes on an electric, almost crystalline quality. I can almost see a collective thought bubble rising from these poets whose work I so admire, who snap to attention: “Who IS this guy?”

Another distant snapshot: Calling Lisa Rhoades to let her know that she had won Poet Lore’s Ratner-Ferber competition, which came with publication and a $1,000 prize. I could have just mailed to inform her, but the thought of making that call was irresistible. Her happiness was so contagious I felt as if I had won the prize. Clearly I had missed my calling: I should have been a game show host.

The first three executive editors I worked with were Phil Jason, Barbara Lefcowitz, and Roland Flint. They, and the editors that followed, all worked tirelessly to make a very good literary journal. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who gave so much, so selflessly, to the literary community as Phil Jason. It was an honor to work with him for several years. I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to two great recent managing editors, Jason DeYoung and Caitlin Hill.

The first two creative writing workshops I took were with Ann Darr, a great poet and teacher who became a dear friend. After that I joined what might be called the Rod Jellema Gang, taking dozens of workshops with him over the years. After the workshop ended at 10 pm a bunch of us would go out for drinks at a little bar in Bethesda called the Rolling Inn. We were younger then. Later I took other several good workshops with Bill O’Sullivan and Bill Loiseaux. I was also fortunate to take a personal essay workshop years ago with Phillip Lopate, who we’re glad to have as our reader for this Saturday’s birthday celebration.

Other memories: Trips to Colonel Brooke’s Tavern with Rod Jellema and Marty Galvin to hear the Federal Jazz Commission. Too many great readings to recount. I think of the 40th Anniversary Dryad Press celebration and the Jimi Hendrix anthology reading. We filled the room to overflowing to give thanks to Merrill Leffler and Rick Peabody, editors who have so generously contributed to the community.

As I’ve said many times, the workshop leaders are the heart and soul of the Center, and I’ve been honored, and humbled, to be able to work with them over the years. There are too many names left out, too many people to thank. (Hi Rose, Hi Reuben. . . .) Years ago, when Al Lefcowitz and Jane Fox invited me to join the team here, I had no idea that decades later I’d be writing in this blog. My thanks go to Al, Jane, and all the founders. Looking to the future, a big thank you goes to the Board of Directors for a great decision, selecting Charlie Jensen as our Director.

Writer’s Center Assistant Director Sunil Freeman is author of two books of poems, That Would Explain the Violinist (Gut Punch Press, 1993) and Surreal Freedom Blues (Argonne Hotel Press, 1999). More recent work is included online in The Delaware Poetry Review and Beltway, and in the anthology Kiss the Sky: Fiction and Poetry Starring Jimi Hendrix. He’s one of several long-time friends of the Writer’s Center who can be heard, with Grace Cavalieri, on the Library of Congress website: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/poetpoem.html

Tuesday Trivia Question:
What famous beat author gave a Writer’s Center reading at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School? The event was so popular, in fact, that we had to hold it in a big auditorium.

A) Gregory Corso
b) William S. Burroughs
C) Allen Ginsberg
D) Jack Kerouac

Send your responses to postmaster@writer.org. Responses must be in by NOON on Tuesday. Winners will receive ONE $25 coupon off one multi-session SPRING workshop AND one year FREE membership to The Writer's Center.