Cripple Creek Writing Retreat

The Doctor TJ Eckleburg Review’sown Managing Editor, Nonfiction Editor, and workshop instructor, Chelsey Clammer, won this year’s Owl of Minerva Award from the women’s literary journal Minerva Rising. With the scholarship, Clammer brought four young women to the mountains of Cripple Creek, Colorado for a weekend writing retreat. The women, who are part of a transitional living residency program in Denver for homeless youth with substance abuse and mental illness issues, wrote about wilderness and identity. The women learned different writing techniques and editing skills and gave feedback on each other’s work. The group also went into town in order to watch the donkey races at Cripple Creek’s Annual Donkey Derby Days (Where the fun will be reDONKulous, the advertisements promised)! Upon their return to Denver, Clammer continues to work with the youth twice a week on their writing.

 

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Chelsey Clammer received her MA in Women’s Studies from Loyola University Chicago, and is currently enrolled in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program. She has been published in The Rumpus, Atticus Review, and The Nervous Breakdown among many others. Her essay “A Striking Resemblance” received an Honorary Mention for Water~Stone Review’s 2014 Judith Kitchen Award in Nonfiction. She has won many awards, most recently the Owl of Minerva Award 2014 from the women’s literary journal Minerva Rising. Clammer is the Managing Editor and Nonfiction Editor for The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, as well as a columnist and workshop instructor for the journal. Her first collection of essays, There is Nothing Else to See Here, is forthcoming from The Lit Pub in 2015. You can read more of her writing at: www.chelseyclammer.com.


 

Chelsey Clammer
Chelsey Clammer is the author of the award-winning essay collection, Circadian (Red Hen Press, 2017) and BodyHome (Hopewell Publications, 2015). Her work has appeared in Salon, The Rumpus, Hobart, Brevity, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Normal School and Black Warrior Review. She teaches online writing classes with WOW! Women On Writing and is a freelance editor. Her next collection of essays, Human Heartbeat Detected, is forthcoming (Fall 2022) from Red Hen Press. www.chelseyclammer.com