Writing Workshop with Nature Author David Gessner

Workshop Led by Nature Author David Gessner Offered at FAWC in June

"Writing from Place" Workshop scheduled June 22-27, 2008

PROVINCETOWN - This is a workshop in creative nonfiction with a special emphasis on writing about place. We will explore the role that writing about places—sometimes natural places, sometimes not—can play in writing personal essays and memoir. For nonfiction writers who are stuck for a subject, place often unlocks other topics and deeper concerns. For some writers turning their minds to a specific place they care for—a home, a patch of woods, a beach—can prove a reliable muse.

"Writing from Place" is scheduled for June 22-27 from 1pm-4pm. It is a nonfiction workshop; $600; open to all. The workshop will take place at the Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC) at 24 Pearl Street in Provincetown. Register for the workshop online here or call 508-487-9960.

At the same time, writing about deeply knowing a place can make us feel a little mystical, even silly. As the great Alaskan writer John Haines said: "To express a place in art we need to take certain risks… we need intimacy of a sort that demands a certain daring and risk: a surrender, an abandonment." Or as Barry Lopez puts it, we need to "become vulnerable to a place." We'll attempt this in our work and our reading.

"Writing from Place" is scheduled for June 22-27 from 1pm-4pm.  It is a nonfiction workshop; $600; open to all.  The workshop will take place at the Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC) at 24 Pearl Street in Provincetown.  Register for the workshop online here or call 508-487-9960.

David Gessner is the author of six books, including Return of the Osprey, Sick of Nature, and Soaring with Fidel. His essay, Learning to Surf, won the John Burroughs award for best nature essay of 2006. His essays have appeared on NPR's "This I Believe" series and in many magazines and journals including The New York Times, Georgia Review, American Scholar, Orion, The Harvard Review, and the 2006 Pushcart Prize Anthology. He has taught Environmental Writing as a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer at Harvard, and is currently a Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he also edits the literary journal of place, Ecotone.

Visit David's website here.  Visit the Ecotone site here.