workshop
Workshop meets for two hours every morning and each student (six total) will have the opportunity to workshop a manuscript up to 20 double-spaced pages. Both Giancarlo DiTrapano and Chelsea Hodson will be present for each workshop meeting—fiction and nonfiction will be workshopped together. Each workshop will also involve a lesson from either Giancarlo or Chelsea—past lessons have included topics such as: how to edit on the sentence level, how to use the physical body as a writing tool, and how to use constraints to battle writer's block and inspire new ideas.
Before arriving in Italy, each student is expected to print, read, and mark up the other students' manuscripts and respond with a one-page letter to each student. These letters will guide our discussions.
ABOUT MORS TUA VITA MEA
Mors Tua Vita Mea translates to "your death, my life"—a medieval Latin battle cry that indicates one's defeat is necessary for one's victory. This workshop is not a space for defeat, but a place where you are free to question or abandon your former writing practices in order for new ones to emerge.
Giancarlo, Giuseppe, and Chelsea have run this workshop together since 2017, and have hosted five workshop sessions since then. Our workshop is focused on prose, but we also welcome poets who are writing prose for the first time. We welcome both short pieces and excerpts from longer projects. In every workshop session, we have students from different cities around the world, different aesthetics, and different experience levels. We currently have an acceptance rate of ten percent.
private meetings
Towards the end of the week, Giancarlo and Chelsea host meetings together with each student. Although you will have access to the faculty all week, this time is reserved for any questions still lingering in your mind. It’s a great time to talk about next steps, publishing advice, sustainable writing habits, and personalized reading recommendations.
FIELD TRIPS
Although most of our time will be spent at the villa, we will host at least two day trips to nearby historic sites, restaurants, and churches. These trips will last a few hours and will not be any extra cost to the student. Giuseppe comes with us on these trips and teaches us about Italian history and cuisine.
DAILY SCHEDULE
Each day’s schedule is a little different, but our days look something like this:
9AM: Giancarlo brings breakfast from a nearby cafe—usually fresh cornetti (Italian pastries)
10AM: Workshop begins—we discuss one student’s manuscript per day, for one hour
11AM: Workshop continues, but with a reading, craft discussion, or generative exercise
12PM: Free time
1PM: Lunch
2PM: Free time by the pool, or a field trip to a nearby destination. The last two days of the week will be devoted to hosting meetings during this time
8PM: Dinner
Because we expect workshop response letters to be completed before you arrive, you have a lot of freedom in regards to how you spend the rest of your time at the villa. Some students wake up early to write before anyone else gets up, some students prefer to read by the pool in the afternoon, and some students end up in hours-long discussions with their fellow students late into the night (usually with some Limoncello or Grappa).