The Program

It's not only disquieting but positively alarming how much work and fun can be in synergy, as they are in the city of Lisbon, for people who visit the workshops, attend readings, walk the crooked cobbled streets, and find the time to sketch various scenes . . . Certainly, it's the place to indulge in wild ideas and fantastic conversation.

--Josip Novakovich, 2012 Faculty

The DISQUIET ILP includes:

1. Two-week workshops in a variety of forms.
2. A Literary and Cultural program featuring contemporary Portuguese writers, thinkers, musicians, and artists as well as other events such as literary walks, film screenings, and excursions.

Our North American faculty and guests are among the most compelling and interesting writers working today. Most importantly, we select our teaching faculty primarily on the basis of their strong reputations as teachers of writing and the arts.

The ILP programming takes place at venues throughout Lisbon, which is easily and cheaply navigable by subway, streetcar, and bus, including the Center for National Culture, NOVA the New University, the University of Lisbon, the American Embassy, the headquarters for the Luso-American Development Foundation and others.

The ILP is open to writers of all levels and all ages. We invite you to join us for writing workshops and a unique immersion in one of the mythic literary epicenters of the world.

To get an idea of what the 2013 program will be like, have a look at a previous Program Guide & Schedule.

Workshops

ILP workshops take a number of different forms. The traditional writing workshops meet six times during the two weeks of the program. Other workshops such as The Fernando Pessoa Game and Acting for Writers meet formally twice per week and during other DISQUIET outings and events.

2013 workshops are iisted below. 

*All workshops are subject to enrollment considerations. Workshops may be canceled if adequate enrollment is not reached.
**Instructors sometimes drop out or reschedule, and, in this unlikely scenario, DISQUIET will replace them and notify participants.

Workshop Descriptions

Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry Workshops

These workshops will follow the traditional creative writing workshop model in which students discuss, and critique each other's work in small groups led by the instructor.

Acting for Writers

Step into your fictional characters' shoes. A workshop designed to create and develop literary characters through a series of acting improvisation exercises. Find your characters point of view and make it your own. Know what your character wants and why. Build creative impulses and bring spontaneity to your work.

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity.” - Carl Jung

The Fernando Pessoa Game

For writers and artists in any genre. A poet who engages visual arts and a visual artist whose medium is often the materiality of language issue prompts that send workshop participants out into Pessoa's beloved city. No special skills or equipment are required except something to write with and a phone or camera to take pictures. Please bring a photo of the place where you live now and a small piece of writing describing this place for the first move in the game.

Our Past Travels Travel With Us

From the first moments of traveling, a process begins in which a previously distant place becomes incrementally familiar, so that what once seemed external slowly travels to you, sets up shop in your internal life.  Upon returning home, a friend may ask a question posed in the past tense, “How was your trip?”  Of course: since you have returned, you are no longer there, any GPS system can easily prove that.  But any trip’s fundamental revelations have settled into your present moments, and that foreign country may indeed still be over there, but now it’s inside you, too.  And when we venture far from home again, our past travels then travel with us, they add to our expectations of what we’ll encounter in this new, still unfamiliar place. During our travel writing workshop we will venture out into the unexpected nooks and crannies of Lisbon, but we will not forget where we’ve been before, and how that might shape what we see, and how we write about it.

Lectures on Portuguese Literature and Culture

In cooperation with the University of Lisbon and CETAPS-FCSH (Centre for English, Translation and Anglo-Portuguese Studies), Universidade Nova de Lisboa, the ILP will offer a series of lectures on Portuguese literature and culture spanning a wide array of topics. This lecture series is the ideal context in which to study the intersections between Portuguese and Anglophone literature and culture and contemporary Portuguese literature. These informal lectures and talks will take place in the afternoons after the workshops on the University of Lisbon and NOVA campuses.

Past lectures include: 

• Contemporary Portuguese-American Poetic Strands - A workshop on translating poetry, which will include theoretical notions about the generic problems of translating diasporic literatures; information on Portuguese-American literary works and studies; and mostly Portuguese-English translation of poems by Alberto de Lacerda and English-Portuguese translation of poems by the Portuguese-American poet Frank X Gaspar.
• Camoes and the Epic Portuguese Discoveries
• Jose Saramago and the Post-Modern Portuguese Historical Novel
• The Portuguese Empire in Anglophone Literature: Macao 
• Round table on Representations of Lisbon in Anglophone Travel Writing

In addition, the ILP offers the following:

• Literary walks, most notably The Pessoa Walk.
• Film Screenings including: Director Bruno de Almeida introducing his film “The Art of Amalia”; and screenwriter and actor John Frey introducing the Lisbon-based film he wrote, “The Lovebirds.”
• A tribute to Alberto de Lacerda
• Readings by faculty, guests, Portuguese writers, and participants
• Faculty craft talks
• Discussions on publishing with editors from North American and Portugal, including the editors of Dzanc Books, Guernica, New York Review of Books, St. Petersburg Review and other North American and International publishers and periodicals.
• Excursions to places such as Sintra and Cascais (some of these may require an additional fee)
• ...and more TBA.