Ellen Bass has been supporting and inspiring poets and writers for 35 years.   She teaches in Santa Cruz, CA and leads workshops regularly at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Hollyhock in British Columbia, and at writing conferences throughout the U.S.   This will be her fifth year at La Serrania.

Her last book of poetry, Mules of Love (BOA 2002) won the Lambda Literary Award.  Her work has been published in many journals and magazines including The Atlantic Monthly, The American Poetry Review, Ms., Ploughshares, Field, and The Kenyon Review.  Among her awards for poetry are The Pushcart Prize XXVIII, the Elliston Book Award from the University of Cincinnati, The Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod/Hardman, the Larry Levis Prize from Missouri Review, the New Letters Prize, the Greensboro Award, the Chautaqua Poetry Prize, and a Fellowship from the California Arts Council.

She coedited, with Florence Howe, the groundbreaking book No More Masks!  An Anthology of Poems by Women (Doubleday, 1973) and her nonfiction books include Free Your Mind:  The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth—And Their Allies (HarperCollins, 1996), and The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (HarperCollins, 1988) which has sold over a million copies and been translated into twelve languages.

Her new book of poetry, The Human Line, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in June 2007.

Testimonials

"When I first attended Ellen's workshop I'd been writing 'in the closet' for several years and was feeling isolated and ready to quit. Ellen encouraged me enormously and I haven't stopped writing since. Perhaps most of all I appreciateher passionate commitment to life and her integrity and honesty. A terrific antidote for anyone who has been over-corrected, forced into a false mold,been bitten by sarcasm or pseudo-superiority from a teacher or a school."
                                                                                                               -- Lucy Diggs


"To work closely with Ellen Bass is to know the full measure of her wisdom, insight and compassion."
                                                                                                              -- Maude Meehan


"Ellen knows grammar, style, technique; but what makes her unique is that she offers respect, validation and encouragement to believe in one's own intuitive process. Ellen was the first teacher I trusted with my tentative writings; four years and four classes later I still consult with her when I want feedback from a wise and gentle teacher."
                                                                                                              -- Mariah Burton Nelson


"After not having written for twenty-five years, I was lucky to find Ellen Bass, who encouraged and affirmed my beginning efforts. Had it not been for her, I do not think I would have gone on, and if I had gone on, the way would have been tortuous. I particularly was helped by Ellen's approach to the poem as being a process of life."
                                                                                                              -- Phyllis Koestenbaum


"Before I venture off on my own, leaving behind the safety of the group, I want to take a moment to thank you. For years I have wanted to acknowledge that part of me that longs to write, but I have always managed to give every other part of my life priority. With the help of your class I have rediscovered just how much I love writing and what an important part of me the writing side can be.  I thank you for that.  Your positive feedback, your gentle suggestions, and most of all, your willingness to honor the writer in all of us--these have helped me ease into the writing life.  My real triumph? For the first time, I actually wrote to the end of a journal!  I suspect that will be the first of many."
                                                                                                             -- Ellen Newberry


"Having taken three of her weekend writing workshops, I remain impressed at the subtle, indeed alchemical, way Ellen Bass quickly engenders a safe supportive space in which a wide range of participants create and share increasingly profound and personal, sometimes painful and frequently humorous, work. Inspired and encouraged by the group, I am amazed at the depths to which I am able to dive, and then can carry the magical experience back to my home writing practice."
                                                                                                            --Jim Van Buskirk

For information about joining this workshop Click Here.

Read Ellen Bass' Odysseys:
  'Some Practical Thoughts on Moving Through Writers Block'
  'Asking Directions in Paris'  /  'Two New Poems'

..Or visit her website: www.ellenbass.com