Nature Writing Seminar
$445
Throughout this eight week course, students will look at the many ways in which humans are connected to our natural surroundings, both urban and remote. Weather, soil, plants, wildlife, changing systems, and more will all be explored. By delving into the inherent close relationship humans have with the natural world, each student’s path to writing their own stories using the natural world as scaffolding will emerge.
Each lesson will be designed to unlock the storyteller within by encouraging observation, reading, and learning about natural systems. Participants will read various forms of nature prose and poetry including work by Mary Oliver, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Barbara Kingsolver, Merlin Sheldrake, Richard Powers, Robert Macfarlane, and more. These readings and the resulting discussions will then serve as a springboard to developing personal tone and style.
Through guided exercises students will work to develop their own narrative voice. Each step in the course will hone in on students’ unique narrative perspectives that reflects their own personal connections to the natural world.
The instructor will use in-class writing prompts to help students find their voice. Whether it’s venturing out on an urban hike, gardening in their own backyard, watching a bird from their apartment window, cloud watching, traveling further afield into the wilderness, recalling a previous experience in nature, or walking a creek path, students will have opportunities to capture the feeling of decompressing in nature in words. Students will explore various forms and literary devices in the process.
By reading the greats and engaging with the natural world from a personal standpoint, students will develop their understanding of ecology and our human connection to it as a species. Ideally, by the end of the course, acknowledging human interconnectivity with nature will become an inherent part of their writing process.
This course invites students to dig deep, observe the world around them, slow down, bask in the beauty of the PNW, and discover how their own unique stories can spring from nature.
Access Program
We want our writing classes and seminars to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class and seminar tuitions at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.
Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org if you have questions.
Emily Strelow
Emily Strelow has an MFA in Creative Writing from University of Washington in Seattle and an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science. Her debut novel, The Wild Birds, was published March of 2018 and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Foreword Indies Award. Emily was born and raised in Oregon’s Willamette Valley but has lived all over the West. For the last fifteen years she combined teaching writing with doing seasonal avian field biology. While doing field jobs she camped and wrote in remote areas in the desert, mountains and by the ocean. She is a mother of two boys, naturalist, conservation storyteller, and author living in Portland, Oregon.
