Additional Programs

The Center for Northern Studies
Mountain Cultures Semester
Summer Farm Semester
Wildbranch Writing Workshop
Global Field Studies
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Courses By Residential Faculty

WRITING TO KEEP OUR LOVE ALIVE
Alison Hawthorne Deming
Faced with global warming, cascading extinctions, the erosion of democratic principles, and the diminishment of science as a way to understand the natural world and our human place in that world, a person might well find cause for cynicism and apathy in the early twenty-first century. Yet we need love, hope, and wonder more than ever, as well as a solid grounding in natural history and field observation of our surroundings. In this workshop participants will explore techniques for sharpening their perceptions of the natural world, for refreshing their language with rich description and metaphor, and for finding the stories that renew hope and gratitude during a dark time. Writers of either prose or poetry are welcome. Prose writers will learn poetic techniques for enlivening narrative voice and subject matter; poets will learn to incorporate the language of science in lyrical forms. Participants are asked to bring from their home place an object from nature, the form of which they find interesting.

LITERARY JOURNALISM AND THE STORIED LANDSCAPE
Erik Reece
This course will take up Aldo Leopold’s foundational idea of a land ethic and attempt to apply it to various forms of writing—narrative, reportage, experiential, polemic—all in the service of story. If, as Leopold said, people will not destroy what they love, how do we use writing to make people care enough about natural landscapes that they will want to work to preserve them? This course will work to answer that question. Because the health of the land can never be separated from the health of its people, we will use the genre of literary journalism to tell the stories of particular people in particular, often imperiled, places. In addition, as that genre has expanded to include memoir and advocacy, we will practice using those elements as well. Most importantly, we will focus on how to write with empathy, passion, authority, and concreteness. Because this genre requires some research, students should bring with them some factual and photographic material from a particular issue or place they wish to write about.

PERSONAL STORIES AND GREAT REALITIES
Scott Russell Sanders
Rachel Carson wrote, “If we have ever regarded our interest in natural history as an escape from the realities of our modern world, let us now reverse this attitude. For the mysteries of living things, and the birth and death of continents and seas, are among the great realities.” In this course we will explore ways of writing about personal experience within the context of those great realities—seasons, tides, landscapes, other species, migration, global climate, evolution, geological and cosmic history, and the like. You will be invited to write a series of exercises designed to explore these connections, and in class we will discuss the work you produce, along with some brief examples of published work. Our emphasis will not be on critiquing manuscripts but on understanding the ethical, conceptual, and aesthetic issues involved in telling personal stories within the embrace of the great realities.

ENVIRONMENTAL WRITING FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
Sandra Steingraber
Writing about threats to the environment in ways that keep readers turning the pages and not turning their heads away in despair is a high-wire act. Contaminated breast milk. Pesticide poisonings of frogs and drinking water. Disease outbreaks triggered by climate change. These are all compelling problems about which the public is woefully underinformed. Indeed, they are among the major human rights problems of our time. And yet, our attempts as environmental writers to ring the alarm bell and bring much needed attention to these kinds of topics are often met with accusations of gloom-and-doom extremism. On the other hand, the fifty-simple-things-you-can-do-to-save-the-planet approach does not adequately address the magnitude of the problem nor its root causes. In this class, we will explore writing strategies other than ringing alarm bells and exhorting individual readers to make small changes in their shopping habits. Using the writings of Rachel Carson as our guide, we will look at tone, voice, narrative structure, metaphor, and the use of scientific evidence in the creation of prose that inspires and illuminates, rather than overwhelms and paralyzes, our dear readers.

WRITING AS A BUSINESS
Alison Hawthorne Deming, Erik Reece, Scott Russell Sanders, and Sandra Steingraber
How does one earn a living as a writer? In this session, our residential faculty will try to answer that question. Topics covered by this panel may include generating ideas, query letters, contracts, fees, manuscript preparation, revisions, time management, record keeping, taxes, health insurance, pensions, travel, home offices, agents, working with editors and publishers, and the differences among book, magazine, and newspaper publishing.

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