You only fail if you stop writing

This lecture will focus on three creative writers (while interweaving their literary ancestors) whose writing echoes the Idaho experience: Kim Barnes, Beth Piatote, and Grace Jordan. Participants will enjoy brief readings and biographies, and will explore questions such as how place affects writing, the Native American experience in Idaho, and accurate versus romanticized writing of the West.

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Visit Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Boise State University for class details and registration. 

Idaho’s unique landscape of deep gorges, high desert, big rivers, mountains, plains, and public land creates a diverse population and different ways of seeing and explaining the state through creative writing and poetry. In this workshop, we will look at the myriad and complex ways Idaho is presented in literature, poetry, and prose. Using prompts and imaginative engagement with the landscape, we will produce our own literature to expose, protect, or celebrate — or all of the above — the rich landscape and culture we call Idaho.

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Visit Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Boise State University for details and registration. 

Visit with me & Western Colorado University faculty @ Booth 907

Writing the Body as Landscape: How We See and Imagine Ourselves as Wilderness

With Allen Gee, Renata Golden, Sean Hill, & Petra Kuppers

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How do poets and essayists write and connect landscapes to the body, and what other metaphors do we find inspiring for describing the natural world? Our panel will discuss ways to deepen our understandings of landscape through language, writing against a backdrop of climate crisis, issues of land ownership, historical and racial controversies, and overcrowding. Are our metaphors personal, political, or preservationist? Can relating the body and self to landscape evoke a deeper care for the land?

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Seattle Convention Center, Room TBA

Writing the Land: Inspiration and Perspiration to Create Poetry

With Catalina Marie Cantú, Diana Raptosh, Erica Reid, & Leona Sevick

What if you were paired with a conserved land for a year to visit and create three poems inspired by place and preservation? In this panel, five diverse, emerging, and established poets from east, central, and northwest regions will share their writing process and poems. Their protected lands ranged from protected habitats, sanctuaries, farms, and ranches, to ecosystems and wilderness preserves. Their poetry and the methodologies used to create their poems will challenge and inspire you.

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Seattle Convention Center, Room TBA

Cascadia Reading @ Ella’s Theater

Saturday April 22 @ 11:30 -12:30 PM

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Poetry Salon @ Ella's Theater (moderater)

Saturday, April 22 @ 2:30 - 3:30pm

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