Conservatory Leadership

Josh Wood

Josh Wood

Director, Creative Writing Conservatory

Teaches: Core Classes, Comedy Writing Workshop, Irish Literature, Performance Poetry

josh.wood@ocsarts.net

Mr. Josh Wood holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing and a Master of Arts in English, both from Chapman University, and a bachelor’s degree in literature with a creative writing emphasis from Sonoma State University. As the Creative Writing Conservatory Director, Mr. Wood teaches a variety of fiction and poetry workshops and advises the conservatory’s award-winning art and literary journal, Inkblot

Mr. Wood is a recipient of a John Fowles Center for Fiction Award and a finalist for Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers, The North American Review's James Hearst Poetry Prize, and the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. Mr. Wood’s writing appears in VoltDIAGRAMSpiralOrbThe Berkeley Poetry ReviewOccuPoetry, and many additional publications. Previously, he was an editor for Dirtcakes, a journal dedicated to exploring themes suggested by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals to end extreme poverty. Mr. Wood is dedicated to educating his students to express themselves with clarity, creativity, and purpose through the study of diverse genres, styles, and writers.

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Advisory Board

Jim Blaylock

Jim Blaylock

MFA Director

Chapman University

James P. Blaylock is a professor at Chapman University and is currently the MFA program director for the graduate program in creative writing. In 2000, he developed the Creative Writing Conservatory at the Orange County School of the Arts and directed the conservatory for the following 13 years.

In 2012, he received the U.S. Presidential Scholars Program Teacher Recognition Award in Washington D.C. Mr. Blaylock’s short stories, novels, and collections have been published around the world, and he is also a two-time winner of the World Fantasy Award. He was one of the literary pioneers of the Steampunk movement, along with Tim Powers and K.W. Jeter. His short story “Unidentified Objects” was nominated for an O. Henry Award in 1990. Despite his close association with Steampunk, most of his work is contemporary, realistic fantasy set in southern California. In April, 2016, his novel The Rainy Season was chosen by Orange Coast Magazine as one of the ten quintessential Orange County novels.

“In my 40 years of teaching creative writing and directing creative writing programs, my thirteen years of directing the Creative Writing Conservatory at OCSA was simply the most productive, energizing, engaging teaching that I've had the pleasure to do.  The conservatory does stellar work, and the students are as good as they get.”

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Jamie-Lee Josselyn

Jamie-Lee Josselyn

Recruiter

University of Pennsylvania, Writer’s House

   

Patty Seyburn

Patty Seyburn

Professor of Poetry

California State University, Long Beach

Patty Seyburn’s fourth collection of poems, Perfecta, was published by What Books Press in the fall of 2014. Her third book, Hilarity, won the Green Rose Prize given by New Issues Press (Western Michigan University, 2009). Her two previous books of poems are Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002) and Diasporadic (Helicon Nine Editions, 1998), which won the 1997 Marianne Moore Poetry Prize and the American Library Association’s Notable Book Award for 2000. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, most recently The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, Poetry in Michigan/Michigan in Poetry, and Irresistible Sonnets. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including The Paris Review, Poetry, New England Review, Field, Slate, Crazyhorse, Cutbank, Quarterly West, and Boston Review.

She won a 2011 Pushcart Prize for her poem, “The Case for Free Will,” published in Arroyo Literary Review. Seyburn grew up in Detroit, MI. She earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University, an MFA in Poetry from University of California, Irvine, and a doctoral degree in poetry and literature from the University of Houston. She is an associate professor at California State University, Long Beach and co-editor of POOL: A Journal of Poetry, (www.poolpoetry.com).

“The Creative Writing Conservatory at OCSA does a brilliant job of creating an environment where the imagination soars, personal expression becomes transformed into art, and the voice of the individual is encouraged, crafted, nurtured, and heard.”

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