Beargrass Writers Workshop 2007 - Voices From Nature
Agenda | Faculty | Workshops | Registration & Fees | Contact | Directions
 We are pleased to present the Beargrass Writers Workshop at the Northwest Service Academy Mt. Adams Center in Trout Lake, Wash. Located just 20 miles north of Hood River, Ore., Trout Lake sits under the majestic gaze of the Northwest’s second highest peak.
Beargrass Writers Workshop
The workshop takes its name from the hardy native grass, Xerophyllum tenax, which thrives in the alpine forests of Mt. Adams. Like the dramatic flowering stalk of the Beargrass itself, we are pushing out strands of new growth and energy.
Beargrass brings together a host of talented regional and local writers whose craft is informed by the voice of nature. Following our welcome session and readings on Friday night, workshop attendees will participate in three different sessions on Saturday. Saturday evening will take us to the Trout Lake Country Inn for an evening of reading, performance and celebration.
Stick around on Sunday morning for a choice of different nature hikes (weather permitting) or a bonus workshop on how to combine art and poetry.
Agenda
Friday
|
Time
|
Event
|
Details
|
|
3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
|
Registration
|
|
|
6 p.m.
|
Dinner
|
|
|
7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
|
Welcome session and readings
|
Workshop faculty will read and perform their work.
|
Saturday
|
Time
|
Event
|
Details
|
|
7:30 a.m.
|
Breakfast
|
|
|
9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
|
Session 1
|
Ascalon (poetry)
Hancock (fiction)
Weiler (nonfiction)
|
|
Noon
|
Lunch
|
|
|
1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
|
Session 2
|
Minato (poetry)
Strayed (fiction)
Drake (nonfiction)
|
|
3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
|
Session 3
|
Miller (poetry)
Barrett (fiction)
Ramsey (nonfiction)
|
|
p.m.
|
Dinner
|
|
|
7 p.m. to 10 p.m.
|
Readings and celebration
|
Our visiting faculty members will read from their work. Join us for a wine tasting, dessert and music.
|
Sunday
|
Time
|
Event
|
Details
|
|
8 a.m.
|
Breakfast
|
|
|
9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
|
Nature hikes
|
TBA
|
|
|
Bonus workshop
|
Muir (art & poetry)
|
Faculty
POETRY
Amy Klauke Minato
Roberto Ascalon
Doug Miller
|
|
 Amy Klauke Minato
Amy Minato is a poet, writer and teacher. Her book of poems, The Wider Lens, was published in 2004. Her work has also appeared in From Here We Speak: An Anthology of Oregon Poetry, and in many journals, including Madison Review, Cottonwood Magazine, Cimarron Review, Wild Earth, Fireweed Magazine, Wilderness Magazine, Oregonian Poetry Corner, Mothering Magazine, Windfall Journal, Freshwater Journal, Poetry East and Seneca Review. Minato earned her MFA in Creative Writing and her Master of Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon. She teaches at Washington State University, Vancouver, and for Portland State University, Mountain Writers Breitenbush and Sitka Centers. She lives in Portland.
|
|
 Roberto Ascalon
New York-born Roberto Ascalon is a poet, writer, arts educator and performance artist. He is an instructor at Nova High School in Seattle and teaches teenagers at Artscorp. Ascalon has participated in Bumberslam at the Bumbershoot Festival, the Seattle All City Slam Poetry Finals and two Seattle National Poetry Slams. In 2004, he self-published his book The Words Are Not Enough. His poems have appeared in the anthologies Poetry on Buses 2004: Facts and Fictions and From the Page to the Stage: National Slam Anthology. Ascalon graduated from Evergreen College in Olympia, Wash., with a degree in Advanced Intercultural Communication. He makes his home in Seattle.
|
|
 Doug Miller
Doug Miller has taught English and Creative Writing to high school students for nearly 30 years. His poems have been published in Rattle, The Eleventh Muse, and Into the Teeth of the Wind. Miller has performed in coffee houses, restaurants, and poetry readings around the West. In 2002 he was invited to write and perform at the Fishtrap writers workshop in eastern Oregon. A graduate of Central Washington University, he completed a Master of Educational Administration at Portland State University. An avid ocean kayak guide and mountain climber, Miller teaches Advanced Placement English, College English and Creative Writing to high school students in White Salmon, Wash.
|
NONFICTION
Barbara Drake
Jarold Ramsey
Bill Weiler
|
|
 Barbara Drake
Barbara Drake is the author of Peace at Heart: An Oregon Country Life, and several books of poetry. Her writing has appeared in American Nature Writing, Poets on Place, The Plain Truth of Things, The Sumac Reader, New Geography of Poets, Varieties of Hope, From Here We Speak, Prescott Street Reader, and others. She has written for Windfall,Northwest Review, River Styx,Calyx,North American Review, Oregon Coast Magazine, Sulfur, and other magazines. Drake is a full professor at Linfield College and lives with her husband in the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range.
|
|
 Jarold Ramsey
Jarold Ramsey has taught poetry, creative writing and literature at University of Washington, University of Victoria and University of Rochester. His books include Coyote Was Going There: Indian Literature of the Oregon Country, Reading the Fire: Essays in the Traditional Indian Literatures of America, Nehalem Tillamook Tale, The Stories We Tell: An Anthology of Oregon Folk Literature, New Era: Reflections on the Human and Natural History of Central Oregon, and The Piper of Cloone: Father Keegan and the Early Gaelic Revival. His essays on Shakespeare, modern poetry and American Indian literatures have been published in PMLA, SEL, Massachusetts Review, Journal of American Folklore, Humanities, Boundary II, Literature and Medicine and Oral Tradition. Ramsey received his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Washington. He lives in Madras, Ore.
|
|
 Bill Weiler
Bill Weiler’s books include The Earth Speaks, Don’t Run From Bears and Other Advice on Living with Wildlife in the Columbia River Gorge and Secrets of Our Shrub-Steppe Home: Teaching and Learning about the Columbia Basin. He has been a habitat biologist with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife for 16 years. He is founder and board chair of the Columbia Gorge Ecology Institute and a regional representative for the Institute for Earth Education. Weiler has a Master of Environmental Resources Administration from George Williams College in Chicago. He lives in Lyle, Wash.
|
FICTION
Cheryl Strayed
Leigh Hancock
David Barrett
|
 Cheryl Strayed
Cheryl Strayed’s critically acclaimed novel, Torch, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2006. Torch was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award and was selected by the Oregonian as one of the top 10 books of the year by writers from the Pacific Northwest. Strayed’s award-winning stories and essays have appeared in more than a dozen magazines, including the New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, Allure, Self, and The Sun. Widely anthologized, her work is featured in The Best New American Voices 2003 and has been selected twice for The Best American Essays. Raised in Minnesota, Strayed now lives in Portland with her husband and their two children.
|
|
 Leigh Hancock
Leigh Hancock writes fiction, nonfiction and poetry from her home in the Columbia Gorge. Her work has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Calyx, Sundog and Mothering Magazine. Her writing has been performed on National Public Radio. Hancock has been a recipient of fellowships from the Henry Hoyns Foundation, Fishtrap, Hedgebrook, Villa Montalvo and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. She teaches literature, writing and women’s studies at Columbia Gorge Community College and manages to balance her life as mother, college instructor, grant writer and writer . Hancock has an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Virginia.
|
|
 David Barrett
David Barrett has been performing as a storyteller since 1981. His first program, “Northwest Mythtime,” features myths and tales from the Native American Northwest. “Pacific Rim Mythtime,” produced for the Oregon Council for the Humanities, examines the cultural values passed through storytelling. His program “Undersea Journeys” draws on fantastic tales of underwater travels from China, Japan, Alaska and the Northwest. Barrett has toured the state supported by Young Audiences of Oregon, the Oregon Arts Commission and the Oregon Council for the Humanities Chautauqua programs. He has given storytelling workshops in libraries, schools and universities across the country. Barrett lives in northwest Oregon, near the town of Timber.
|
COMBINING ART AND POETRY
Jan Muir
|
|
 Jan Muir
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest gave Jan Muir a love for the outdoors, the inspiration for her art. Muir worked as a professional graphic artist for an environmental interpretive company for eight years. She moved to Alaska in 1989 and continued her graphics work, establishing her own graphics company. Muir has illustrated several environmental education books and also begun painting watercolors. Since then she has exhibited in several solo watercolor shows and has had her paintings accepted in various juried exhibitions. She relocated back to the Columbia Gorge in 2006 and is reestablishing herself as a Pacific Northwest artist
|
Workshops
Poetry sessions
Amy Klauke Minato
The Divine Earth: A Nature Writing Workshop
Spend a day in the laps of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Annie Dillard and other nature writers. Breathe in their unique expressions of the natural world. Writing about the natural world covers a wide terrain. Writers look at details as well as the abstract through many lenses. Trying out new ways of expression can enrich our experience and strengthen our writing. Knowing the range of styles can help us to place our own writing in the spectrum. In this workshop we will discuss several examples of nature writing and practice a few of the techniques we observe. Amy’s teaching style is friendly and helpful, and her class format varies from small group discussion and writing exercises to peer editing and reading circles.
Roberto Ascalon
TBA
Doug Miller
Harvesting Poems
In this workshop we’ll discover new methods of generating poetry. The workshop will concern itself with line prompts and the kernels for metaphor. Students can bring one or two poems to share with the group and should bring an openness to discuss and consider the process of revision. A particular focus will involve a greater understanding of the language of poetry, how to share it out loud, and how to consider work for publication.
Nonfiction sessions
Barbara Drake
Writing in the Natural World
Many of us have experiences in nature that delight, surprise, challenge and take our breath away. Living in the moment is good. But when it comes to sharing these experiences in print, it’s usually not enough just to wax lyrical. This workshop will deal with some of the ways you can turn personal experiences in the natural world into polished writing, from using effective journaling and light research, to finding a strong point of identification and using the techniques of fiction to tell true stories.
Jarold Ramsey
Writing about People and Places
“The classical is only the local made universal, words marked by a place”
—William Carlos Williams
This workshop focuses on writing about the interactions between people and the human and natural environments in which they live and work. Here in the Northwest our natural settings are immediate and diverse, and how we imagine those settings is of primary importance, especially in a time of rapid and uncertain change. Writing about people and places means (among other things) engaging local history and folklore, and “local science.” Doing it well entails working up an effective written voice. Only imagine how different Walden would be if registered not in Thoreau’s voice, but in John Muir’s, Annie Dillard’s or William Kittredge’s!
Bill Weiler
A Most Special Place
To get us in the writing mood, we will watch a short video showing early morning scenes at a Nature Conservancy property in the shrub-steppe country. We will then read a few passages from known and little known nature writers, voices calling out about wild places. As a group we will discuss how writing about the natural world can result in scientific information, environmental action, a sense of wonder and exploration. Finally, we will add our own collective voice by writing about our own wonderful natural places, areas that as we reminisce, make us smile, and make us wish we were there.
Fiction sessions
Cheryl Strayed
Making the Leap from Life to Art
Have you ever read a novel or story that you know is at least partially autobiographical and wondered how the writer transformed her or his own personal experience into a fictional work that expresses universal themes? Have you attempted to write a fictional account based on your own experiences and come up short, unable to make the leap from life to art? In this workshop, we’ll analyze how fiction writers use their own interesting, tragic, hilarious and amazing experiences as the basis for their novels and short stories, and also how you can do so. We’ll do writing exercises that will help you transform personal stories into fictional ones and we’ll also discuss the inherent benefits, dangers, pitfalls and pay-offs of using your life as the raw material for your art.
Leigh Hancock
The Perfect Detail: Where Internal and External Landscapes Meet
Our focus for this hands-on workshop will be identifying and using “the perfect detail” to express character, place and theme. We will seek to describe that place where the internal, human landscape meets (and is defined by) the external, natural world.
David Barrett
A Storyteller’s Tool Kit
This workshop explores the process of bringing a text from the page to performance. A myth from the Klikitat Tribe, “The Animals argue about night and day,” will be presented in two formats. First, we will experience it as a straight translation read from the page, and then we will see it as a performed story. The various strategies and techniques of the storyteller’s art will be outlined and elucidated. Storytelling is at the heart of human communication and informs and enriches the creative process. This session will intrigue anyone interested in a good story and how to tell it.
Art & Poetry Workshop
Jan Muir
Adding Visual Elements Your Poetry Writing
This workshop focuses on how to share your poetry writing with others through various art media. You will be invited to work on several hands-on projects for displaying your work. Learn how to create different kinds of easy-to-make small books to use as gifts. Make various paper backgrounds with watercolor, simple print-making and borders for printing on with a digital copier. We’ll discuss ways to frame your work for display. Make some simple Japanese wind chimes for a Haiku. No artistic talent is necessary to do these projects. Just come and have some fun!
|
