Writing from a Changing Place
Virtual Workshop with Tamara Dean
Saturday, October 12, 2024 – 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Central
Meeting via Zoom
Cost: $40 for MWC Members | $60 for non-members – register via the PayPal link below
or call (309) 732-7330
Workshop Description:
Writing can help us reconcile with changes confronting our favorite places whether due to extreme weather, development, or disasters. Writing can lead us to new ways of honoring and tending those places. And it can connect us with others through our concern and desire to preserve the forests, fields, streams, and backyards we treasure.
This workshop will guide you through depicting a beloved location in a vivid, compelling way. You’ll create a portrait of that special place. You’ll learn techniques for conveying experiences and emotions in scenes and descriptions that will affect your readers deeply. You’ll be invited to share discoveries about your writing with others. You’ll leave the workshop with the beginning of a draft that you can develop further into a story, essay, poem, or longer work about the landscape that speaks to your heart.
This workshop is open to writers with any level of experience working in any genre. We won’t exchange feedback on drafts, but we’ll gather in a spirit of curiosity and generosity to support our own and each other’s writing. There will be plenty of time for questions.
Learning and Writing Goals
By the end of this workshop, you will have:
- Recognized the significance of place-based writing in the collective imagination
- Experimented with generative writing techniques for transforming your experiences and
emotions into vivid, compelling narratives - Brought alive your unique, beloved place through writing
- Explored through writing ways of honoring and tending a place
- Addressed through writing complicated responses to changes in the natural world, such
as affinity, grief, or confusion - Exchanged insights about place-based writing with other writers
- Considered how personal storytelling contributes to resiliency while facing dramatic
changes - Composed a draft that you can develop into a complete story, essay, poem, or longer
work
Instructor Bio:
I’m an author of fiction and nonfiction based in Madison, WI. My short stories and essays have appeared in The American Scholar, The Georgia Review, The Guardian, Orion, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. My story “Wrecker” appeared in One Story in 2023 and was nominated by the editors for a Pushcart Prize. My essay “Safer Than Childbirth” received a 2024 Pushcart Prize Special Mention, and “Slow Blues” was a 2021 National Magazine Award finalist. My essay collection, Shelter and Storm, is forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press in 2025. https://tamaradean.media/