Come join award-winning writers, David Kranes and Jeff Metcalf for the 2nd Annual Creative Writing Conference at Le Lavandin in the heart of Provence. The week long conference will concentrate on fiction, non-fiction and playwriting. In small groups, conference attendees will work closely with faculty on work-in-progress and new pieces generated at the workshop. Le Lavandin's Creative Writing Workshop is on a first come, first serve basis and space is limited. Le Lavandin's conference offers beginning writers and advanced writers a wide variety of experiences. A willingness to be playful, a sense of humor and a love of the written word are essential qualifications for all participants! Conference members may bring laptops. Please check your manufacturer's recommendations regarding electrical conversion for France.

David Kranes and Jeff Metcalf hard at work durring the 2003 Creative Writing Workshop.

David Kranes is a writer of both fiction and plays. Published books include six novels and two volumes of short stories. David's stories have been anthologized and have won prizes including the coveted Pushcart Prize. He has two novels and one book of short stories forthcoming. His most recent novel is The National Tree. His plays have been performed in New York and across the U.S. at notable regional theaters. His play, BeautifulL Dreamer, based on the life of American composer, Stephen Foster, was recently performed in Atlanta. David has been a professor at the University of Utah, where he's won numerous university teaching awards. For fourteen years, he served as Artistic Director at Robert Redford's Sundance Institute's Playwrights' Lab—a developmental laboratory which sent over thirty plays to New York and other regional theaters. Two of these plays won Pulitzer Prizes. In recent years, he has spent considerable time consulting in the casino industry--in America and abroad— in matters of casino space and design.

An award winning writer and teacher, Jeff Metcalf lives in Salt Lake City, Utah where he teaches creative writing at the University of Utah. Metcalf is the recipient of the Huntsman Award for Excellence in Education, a Fulbright Memorial Scholar Award, the National Council of English Teachers Award, the Lifetime Advocacy Award from Writers @ Work, grants from both the Utah Humanities Council and the Utah Arts Council and numerous other teaching awards. A finalist for the American Fiction Award and a first-place runner-up for the Flyway Humor Award, Metcalf currently writes for Amazing Outdoor Magazine, Sky Magazine, Salt Lake Magazine, CATALYST and numerous local and national publications. He is the co-founder of the Sawtooth Writers Conference, Young Writers @ Work, and currently is part of the New Playwrights Series sponsored by the Salt Lake Acting Company. His most recent play, Where To? was performed during the 2002 Winter Olympics in a collection of short plays entitled: Cabbies, Cowboys and the Tree of the Weeping Virgin. Metcalf's first book, The Last Steelhead was recently published by Elik Press.

David Kranes and Jeff Metcalf were the subjects of a documentary, Left Brain, Right Brain, which explores the craft of writing. When he is not writing, Metcalf can be found fly fishing the great trout waters of the West.