At the Associated Writers Program Conference in Portland, OR, Cuba Writers Program faculty and alumni reading and discussion

Thank you for your interest in the Cuba Writers Program, running this May 2-10 in Havana and beyond. Award-winning travel and fiction writers Tim Weed and Alden Jones offer daily writing workshops in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in combination with active exploration of Cuba, including visits with writers living on the island; daily adventures in Havana; studio visits with visual artists, dancers, and musicians; an excursion to Ernest Hemingway’s immaculately preserved home; dining at some of Havana’s best paladars; and taking advantage of the events happening during the week. This year we overlap with the Havana Art Biennial, during which the city of Havana is overtaken by public art.  Our excursion this year is to Playa Larga, one of the most beautiful spots on the island. Click on the links above to learn more!

Applications for the 2019 Cuba Writers Program are currently being accepted. Learn how to apply!

Our 2019 excursion is to Playa Larga, where we will spend 3 nights in beachside casas particulares.

“Seeing Cuba through the lens of the Cuba Writers Program was nothing short of a revelation. The itinerary was incredibly well plotted, starting on the first full day with an overview of Old Havana’s cobbled streets, then dipping into the political, cultural and literary with the lectures, workshops, and visits to artists’ studios, art and music schools, and so much more. It was a wonderful balance of a wide view and close up, and I left feeling like I started to get to know Cuba in a way I never would have without such careful plotting. Thank you Tim and Alden for so generously providing your knowledge and spirit over an incredibly rich and inspiring 8 days!” Jean Victor, California

Join us for 8 days in Havana and beyond, May 2-10, 2019. Workshops with Tim Weed and Alden Jones, and the unparalleled lectures of Cuban culture expert Tim Weed. Email us at cubawriters [at] gmail [dot] com with questions or to apply.

Thanks to V. Hansmann and the Cornelia Street Cafe for hosting the Cuba Writers Program faculty reading. So great to see so many members of the CWP family!

Head over to our Photos page to see more!

We are thrilled to announce our 2017 dates and call for applications!

Come join us in Cuba April 27-May 5 for the second Cuba Writers Program.

Click on the above links to learn more.

Thank you to everyone who made the inaugural Cuba Writers Program a great success! Here is a taste of the photos from our trip. See more by clicking the Photos tab above. Stay tuned for upcoming information about the May 2017 trip!

Alden Jones’s memoir, The Blind Masseuse: A Traveler’s Memoir from Costa Rica to Cambodia, was hailed by Shelf Awareness as “a mesmerizing travelogue” and by The Rumpus as “a witty and daring chronicle.” In one chapter, Alden writes of her friendship with Cuban tour guide Darwin, the “tourist Apartheid” in Cuba, and Darwin’s past as a soldier in the civil war in Angola. You can read the original essay in The Smart Set, or an excerpt below.

Then find out more about the Cuba Writers Program or How to Apply Now!

It was around the time I met Victor that he started actively trying
to get out of Cuba. He worked in tourism, illegally, and between jobs
he fought for the paperwork to move to Spain. We worked together for a
summer, then I went back to the States, and he was still where I left
him when I came back to Cuba the following summer to work again. I was
employed by a program for American high school students that combined
educational travel with casual coursework. For me, being in Cuba,
though my job occupied me around the clock, was like a holiday.

When I saw Victor again he didn’t look well. His body, as before,
was solid: he was shorter than I was, which is to say below the height
of the average American woman, and his arms and back were sturdy and
masculine and muscled, his trunk square and solid. He was not lacking a
slight paunch. A wild head of curly, unruly hair that fell almost to
his shoulders gave Victor an animal virility. But his complexion was
different from the last time I’d seen him. His sun-darkened, freckled
skin was ashen, glossed with a sheen of sweat. He hacked a constant
cough. His facial expressions betrayed the status of the invisible
aspects of his health: He frequently had the fixed, pinched expression
of a man withstanding something.

“It’s my stomach,” he said. “The doctors are saying no more caffeine.”

That was horrible news. When Victor and I had time to relax, it was always over espressos at the hotel bar.

“Or cigarettes, or alcohol, and many kinds of food, especially greasy food.”

But the program we worked for was such that food was available in
abundance — though, in Cuba, even wealthy Americans had limited menu
choices, and most of the time these foods we ate were greasy, fried
chicken and pizza without tomato sauce and spaghetti served in a
shallow puddle of oil, and Victor ate what we ate. It was understood
that when we weren’t there, Victor, like most Cubans, was not precisely
sure where his next meal would come from. You didn’t turn down a
month’s worth of free food. You ate what you were served.

“The stress is not helping my situation,” Victor said. Every time he
went to Migración to check on his paperwork, the officials smirked at
him and told him the man he needed to see wasn’t in. The officials knew
who he was, knew that he worked illegally, knew that he lived in an
illegal apartment. They had no desire to help him get out of Cuba. Even
his relatives were deliberately making things difficult. One aunt in
particular had it in for Victor, had ratted on him when the officials
stopped by her house to ask if Victor resided in the house where he was
registered. Victor felt ganged up on, straitjacketed. He had a quick
temper, but exploding in Migración wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

Read the rest at The Smart Set.