Writing By Writers...

About The Class: The poetic line has become, through our centuries of written poetry, a fundamental aspect of poetry, but we know that arranging language into lines doesn’t automatically make a poem. The poetic line is distinct, because its composition is intentional, determined by a combination of qualitative and quantitative characteristics. But what are these characteristics, and how might you make more deliberate choices of diction, rhythm, and syntax to shape your poem’s most felicitous lineation? With these guiding questions, we will look deeper into the poetic line: its origins, its transformations, its functions, and its possibilities. With the guidance of a few exemplary poems, we will discuss the relationship between line and the poem as a whole, as well as line’s relationship with syntax, considering the line’s various qualities and functions. The aim of this class is to deepen our understanding of the poetic line and make more confident choices of lineation in our own poems. About The Faculty: Jennifer Elise Foerster is the author of three books of poetry, most recently, The Maybe Bird, and served as the Associate Editor of When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry. She is the recipient of a NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, was a Wallace Stegner Fellow, and holds a PhD in Literary Arts from the University of Denver. Foerster currently teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshop, Institute of American Indian Arts, and as visiting faculty at the Michener Center at UT Austin. A Mvskoke citizen, she lives in San Francisco.

About The Class: This three-hour generative workshop invites you into a focused examination of the lyrical nature essay, where the elements of the natural world become guides for crafting prose. We'll discover how your unique ways of seeing and knowing can give craft to your experiences within our shared environment. This class is for all writers who feel a genuine connection to the natural world and wish to translate that connection into prose that resonates with truth and artistry. If you're drawn to the various gifts of poetry, or if music, image, and nonlinearity already inform your expression, this workshop offers you the opportunity to bring those techniques to prose. Guided by CMarie’s experience writing from the land and her understanding of how our stories are rooted in place and personal history, you will learn to sharpen your senses for vivid detail, find your authentic voice by intertwining personal perspectives with nature observations, craft with lyrical intention, and explore organic structures (like braids or spirals) that honor your unique story. Through inspiring readings, generative exercises, and supportive sharing, you will nurture the craft techniques that will transform your relationship with the natural world into deeply personal and engaging lyrical essays. Expect to leave with new writing starts, an overflowing toolbox of craft techniques, and a new understanding of how to craft lyrical essays that beautifully bridge your inner experience of the natural world with the reader's understanding and imagination. About The Faculty: CMarie Fuhrman is an award-winning author, poet, and teacher whose work is deeply rooted in the Western landscape. She is the author of the acclaimed Salmon Weather: Writing from the Land of No Return and the poetry chapbook Camped Beneath the Dam. Fuhrman co-edited two significant and award-winning anthologies: Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, and Poetry and Native Voices: Indigenous Poetry, Craft, and Conversations. Her voice extends beyond the page, with appearances in documentaries and on stage, bringing her powerful narratives and insights to diverse audiences. As the host of Terra Firma, a Colorado Public Radio program, she further explores themes central to her work. Her poetry and nonfiction have been featured or are forthcoming in numerous prestigious publications, including Terrain.org, Emergence Magazine, Alta Magazine, Northwest Review, Yellow Medicine Review, Poetry Northwest, Big Sky Journal, and various anthologies. CMarie serves as the director of the Elk River Writers Workshop and is an award-winning columnist for The Inlander. She is the Associate Director and Poetry Director for Western Colorado University's low-residency Graduate Program in Creative Writing, where she also teaches nature writing and poetry. A former Idaho Writer in Residence, CMarie Fuhrman resides in the Salmon River Mountains of Idaho, a place that continues to inspire her work and advocacy for beings and land.

About The Class: People can be scary, especially lately, and many many of us are finding solace these days in the more than human world. In our dogs and horses, osprey and antelope, in mountains and meadows, sky and the snowflakes, maybe in some deep druidic faith in the Earth. My relationships with the more than human world are more than just a theme I turn to again and again in my work; they also comprise something like my deep spiritual center. Something I might call my soul. And yet at least in the years that I have been making my living as a writer, writing about animals, or writing in which a mountain, for example, might have a point of view, or a plot might turn on the shifting course of a river, have been few and far between among the vast numbers of stories and novels about humans working their shit out in coffee shops. Not that there is anything wrong with those. Not that I don’t love (need) coffee. In this workshop, however, we will focus on writing about animals, domesticated and wild; trees, individuals and entire forests, oceans, mountains, clouds, weather. They will become more than landscape, more than easy emotion. They will become characters, we will let them be, if they want to be, the reason the story exists at all. And if we dare we might even explore an underworld, a future world, or another world all together Workshop is open to writers in all genres. It will be mostly generative in nature, but we will share what we are working on from time to time during class. Join me in honoring the non-human beings that keep us whole. There will be a non required but recommended reading list that will accompany the course and will be given a few weeks in advance if people want to get inspired. About The Faculty: Pam Houston is the author of the memoir Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country, as well as two novels, Contents May Have Shifted and Sight Hound, two collections of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, and a collection of essays, A Little More About Me, as well as a book of essay between Pam and environmental activist Amy Irvine, called Airmail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics and Place. Her stories have been selected for volumes of The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Short Stories of the Centuryamong other anthologies. She is the winner of the Western States Book Award, the WILLA Award for contemporary fiction, the Evil Companions Literary Award and several teaching awards. She teaches in the Low Rez MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, is Professor of English at UC Davis, and co-founder and creative director of the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers. Pam’s passions include Icelandic Horses (especially the ones who live in Iceland, where she goes as often as possible,) Irish Wolfhounds, travel, mentoring and teaching, particularly teaching writing about the more than human world. She lives on a homestead at 9,000 feet near the headwaters of the Rio Grande in Colorado with her husband Mike and two dogs, a quarter horse, a miniature donkey, four Icelandic ewes, four hens and a rooster. Her forthcoming book, Without Exception: Reclaiming Abortion, Personhood and Freedom, was published in September 2024.

About The Class: This offering is open to anyone who took the 4-week More Than Human World Class in the spring and felt, as I did, that we ran out of time and there was so much more to talk about. We barely scratched the surface of trees and rocks and rivers and oceans and underworlds and overworlds and of course there will always be more to say about animals. This is also open to anyone signing up for The More Than Human World Part One in the Fall. If you would like to go on an 8 week journey rather than a 4-week journey. There will be additional reading, additional writing and additional conversation, exercises and opportunities to read your work aloud and possibly even a special guest. I hope to see some of you back for more. About The Faculty: Pam Houston is the author of the memoir Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country, as well as two novels, Contents May Have Shifted and Sight Hound, two collections of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, and a collection of essays, A Little More About Me, as well as a book of essay between Pam and environmental activist Amy Irvine, called Airmail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics and Place. Her stories have been selected for volumes of The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Short Stories of the Centuryamong other anthologies. She is the winner of the Western States Book Award, the WILLA Award for contemporary fiction, the Evil Companions Literary Award and several teaching awards. She teaches in the Low Rez MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, is Professor of English at UC Davis, and co-founder and creative director of the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers. Pam’s passions include Icelandic Horses (especially the ones who live in Iceland, where she goes as often as possible,) Irish Wolfhounds, travel, mentoring and teaching, particularly teaching writing about the more than human world. She lives on a homestead at 9,000 feet near the headwaters of the Rio Grande in Colorado with her husband Mike and two dogs, a quarter horse, a miniature donkey, four Icelandic ewes, four hens and a rooster. Her forthcoming book, Without Exception: Reclaiming Abortion, Personhood and Freedom, was published in September 2024.