Words for the More-Than-Human World

In this workshop, we’ll do some deep, collaborative reading of sample works before we turn to making our own poems that honor the natural world. Toward this endeavor, we will make use of the beautiful grounds and waters around the Wenatchee River Institute. All reading material will be provided by the instructors. Bring paper and a pencil or pen for your own writing.

Cynthia Neely bio:
Cynthia Neely is the winner of both the Bright Hill Press chapbook contest with Passing Through Blue Earth (2016) and Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment’s chapbook contest with Broken Water (2011). Her collection, Flight Path (2014), was a finalist in the Aldrich Press book contest. Hopewell Bay, (2017) a single long hybrid poem, was awarded publication by Seven Kitchens Press. Essay and creative non-fiction work appears in The Writers’ Chronicle, Terrain.org and Cutthroat Journal. She calls home both the foothills of the Cascades and a granite island in Canada, sharing her time between mountains and water.

Derek Sheffield bio:
Derek Sheffield’s books include Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry (Mountaineers, 2023), Not for Luck (Michigan State University, 2021), selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy (Trinity, 2020). He teaches at Wenatchee Valley College and is on the faculty of Western Colorado University’s low-residency MFA program. Poetry editor of Terrain.org, he can often be found in the forests and rivers along the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range near Leavenworth, Washington.

Cost: $40 non-members, $30 WRI and Write on the River Members.