Bread Loaf Writers Conference

by Leanne Ogasawara

Standing before Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights in the Prado is an act of surrender. Eyes are consumed by details: naked bodies cavorting in crystalline ponds, human-sized strawberries and a multitude of dripping cherries. There are birds devouring humans, whilst cities are collapsing into flames at the far edge of vision. Each figure is rendered with miniature precision, yet together they overwhelm, producing an excess that resists containment.

Bosch offers no single story; the painting’s power lies in its refusal to be reduced. It is “too much”—and therein lies its meaning. I was not surprised, therefore, to find details from the painting on the cover of Becca Rothfeld’s 2024 book All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess. I had heard so much about this book before finally picking up a copy. Offering a strong critique of our contemporary aesthetics of minimalism, I thought it was a perfect book to pack for my summer of writing. First, working on a novel manuscript at two writers’ residencies, one in Vermont and the next in Virginia, I then made my way to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and then to Bread Loaf. It was two-and-a-half months living out of a small suitcase with that one book along for the ride– in hardcover, of course.

From Marie Kondo’s call for us to “take out the trash” –where trash is defined as anything we are not currently using and enjoying– to the multi-million-dollar mindfulness industry, which similarly sells ways for us to de-clutter, Rothfeld’s book asks us to consider that less is not always more.

Sure, sometimes it is.

Especially for Americans whose lives do so often seem to be spinning out of control, not least of all because of all the stuff we endlessly buy and throw away, by all the choices we have, and how these endless choices seem to define who we are. Maybe for people constantly loading up at Costco and traveling overseas several times a year, with households with so many moving parts, a car per person, Kondo’s style of clean consumerism can feel like a relief, of sorts. I get it. Read more »

by Leanne Ogasawara

I walked through woods muddy and wet, feet sinking down into the boggy earth. With each step, mosquitoes rose up in clouds. It felt more like I was forging a river than walking a path through woods.

I was told that it was less than two miles to Robert Frost’s writing cabin in the woods. According to the Bread Crumb, the daily newsletter put out by the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, it was a must-see. Just follow the pink ribbons…it instructed. And sure enough, pretty pink ribbons were tied to tree branches, marking the way, whenever two roads diverged through the woods.

I had only applied to the conference on a whim. Well, not a whim exactly, but more like a major disappointment and a bad experience with a literary agent sent me spiraling… but then after a week of tears, I decided to just get back up again. What else could I do anyway? “Fall down seven times, get back up eight” 七転び八起き says the old Japanese proverb.

And so, I applied to several workshops and one residency.

I don’t recall where or how I first heard about Bread Loaf. Maybe it was from that old Simpson’s episode, when Lisa launches tavern-owner Moe’s literary career by sending his poem to a magazine:

Howling at a concrete moon,

My soul smells like a dead pigeon after three weeks.

I shut my window and go to sleep.

In my dream I eat corn with my eyes.

Moe’s poem creates a literary splash, and he is immediately invited to attend Word Loaf, where Jonathan Franzen and Michael Chabon—both played by themselves—end up getting into a fight. And, everyone but Lisa goes on a hay ride.

Thinking about it, though, I wonder if I didn’t first hear about Bread Loaf in connection to the great American poet Robert Frost.

Do American kids in public schools still memorize his poems? Read more »

Tag: Bread Loaf Writers Conference

Garden of Earthly Delights: And Becca Rothfeld’s All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess

Monday, September 11, 2023

Robert Frost’s Ghost: The Bread Loaf Writers Conference