A 2-Day Creative Nonfiction Workshop
Saturday & Sunday, February 7 & 8, 10 AM - 1 PM
What if we reimagined narrative writing as an act of foraging—of slow, intentional, deep looking, in which we utilize our senses to navigate the varied landscape of story? What might we notice, along the way, when we fully immerse ourselves in the specificities of place?
In this workshop, we’ll spend time doing close readings of masterful voices of place, along with interactive, generative writing prompts (including some outdoors, weather permitting), followed by discussion led by a lifelong Maine outdoorsperson and writer, and a landscape/place-based writer, educator, and outdoor guide. Students will engage in self-reflection, share their work in small groups, and receive thoughtful, personal feedback from instructors. This discussion-based workshop encourages writers to think beyond the confines of “setting” to infuse their prose with illuminating specificities of landscape and place.
$120 Members/$175 Nonmembers
Ryan Brod is writer, editor, educator, Registered Maine Guide, and filmmaker who grew up amongst the Belgrade Lakes. He’s the author of Tributaries: Essays from Woods and Waters (Islandport Press, 2023), which explores male relationships in the context of outdoor-themed narrative essays. His work also appears in River Teeth, The Maine Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Gray’s Sporting Journal, and many other places. He teaches first-year writing and creative nonfiction at the University of New England. www.ryanbrod.com
A word from Ryan: I feel disconnected from placeless stories—narratives that exist within some kind of void, often within the restrictive realm of the narrator’s mind. To me, landscape is far more than a backdrop, a setting. It is infused within the very language of a story, and within the DNA of its characters.
Jenna Rozelle is an outdoors enthusiast, homesteader, writer, and wild foods teacher from Maine. Her writing has been published in Orion Magazine, Rustica Journal, and Radar Poetry, where she was a finalist for the Coniston Prize. Her work is forthcoming in the anthology Cape Cod to Nova Scotia: Poetry, Art, Ecology of the Gulf of Maine, by Storey Press. Her weekly newsletter, Appetites, can be found at jennarozelle.substack.com.
A word from Jenna: Foraging is one of the foundational reasons that humans exist. If it were not for our co-evolution with and consumption of plants, our bodies would have adapted to do something else, and we would never have come to be what we now know as humans in the first place. Some say foraging may also have something to do with why language exists. Not storytelling - I’m sure storytelling was earlier, but they go hand in hand - for whole communities to know plants well enough to eat them safely, and therefore survive, it necessitated the creation of a shared language that we could trust to describe the world around us and within us. Utilizing these long-worn pathways for essential communication can be a reliable catalyst for saying what you’re trying to say.
ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED
All MWPA workshops require advanced registration. We accept registration by phone, mail, and online via our website. We cannot guarantee registration in the final 24-hours before a workshop, and can rarely accommodate day-of registration.
PAYMENT & CANCELLATION POLICIES
If you need to withdraw from a class after registering for any reason, please email or call the MWPA immediately. You may be eligible for a partial refund or credit, depending on how far in advance you cancel. → MORE INFORMATION
QUESTIONS
For any questions regarding this workshop, please contact programs@mainewriters.org.
REGISTER BY PHONE
Call 207-200-7180 and register with your VISA or MasterCard.
REGISTER BY MAIL
If you prefer to pay by mail, please print this registration form (downloadable PDF) and mail it to the MWPA with a check or credit card information.
SCHOLARSHIP
The MWPA is proud to offer one partial scholarship to this workshop for members-only. Scholarships are awarded on a combination of need and merit. Application Due two weeks prior to the workshop start date, at 9:00 a.m.
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MWPA WORKSHOP POLICIES
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