Nature Writing in a Time of Social Distancing: Field Trip, Field Notes and Online Sharing Session

We’ve moved online! All workshops will be conducted through Zoom, an interactive platform that allows you to participate in exercises and contribute to group conversation in your workshops. The day before your workshop you’ll receive an email with a link to Zoom for your workshop session. 

Member price: $22
Instructor: Celeste Schantz

You’re on assignment, so grab your backpack (virtual or real), notebook and pen. In this class, you’ll be asked to go take a hike! You can start with memories of nature, look out your window or venture out into your yard.
If conditions permit, you’ll be encouraged to go find that special place—whether it’s a city park, a secluded woodland, or a favorite hillside—and observe quietly and deeply. Either way, via your imagination or in person, inspired by the great nature writing of several incredible authors and an exercise from your course packet, you’ll begin turning your field notes into the rough draft of a contemplative piece of nature writing. On the day of the workshop, you’ll share your work with fellow participants in a fun and informative online session. Supportive feedback will be shared.
You’ll come away with advice on how to further shape your work and learn how to incorporate some of the deeper themes—whether darker, or joyous—that inform and inflect our creative writing about nature in these strange and distanced times.

Celeste Schantz is the editor of Mason Street. She was a finalist in Fugue journal’s 2018 annual prose writing contest. Her essay “Lake Under the Sea” appears in Fugue’s spring 2019 issue. She was the recipient of a full endowment to attend the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, where she studied creative nonfiction with the author Helen Macdonald. Celeste was the runner-up for the 2018 Stephen Dunn Prize in Poetry, judged by Terrance Hayes of The New York Times. Her poems appear in Solstice, Stone Canoe, One Throne Magazine, Poetry International, and other publications. She’s studied with authors Marge Piercy and Kim Addonizio, and is the moderator of The Wonderlings Book Club on Facebook. A teacher for 29 years, she now works for the public library, moderating reading, writing and discussion groups.