Writing Yourself Home
A writer is, first and foremost, an observer – not only of the world, but of how they inhabit and move through it. In this nonfiction workshop, we’ll explore writings that look intimately at both internal and external landscapes, rooting the ‘I’ in a place shaped by societal, political, and environmental forces. We will talk about how to write scenes of memory and lived experience as well as how to weave in observation and research about history, culture, and the natural world. Looking to memoir, lyric journalism, travelogues, and even ‘hermit crab’ essays that take inventive forms, we will explore how writers bring readers into their own shoes, and their own homes (natural and built!). This generative workshop requires no previous experience, only a willingness to experiment, explore, and be inspired. We will spend the time primarily with writing exercises, readings of short published works, and craft discussion around how writers capture their own life and surroundings on the page. There will also be opportunities for optional feedback on your writing, both 1×1 with me and in a supportive, nourishing group environment.
Erica Berry is the author of Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear (Flatiron, 2023) which won the 2024 Oregon Book Award and was a finalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Award. Her essays, which often explore the intersection of our emotional lives and the natural world, appear in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Outside, The Guardian, and The Yale Review, and other publications. A contributing editor at Orion magazine, she has taught at the Orion Summer Environmental Writers Workshop, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, the New York Times Student Journeys, and as the 2019-2020 Writer-in-Residence at the National Writers Series in Traverse City, Michigan. A forthcoming visiting environment writer at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, she is also an Associate Fellow at the Attic Institute in her hometown of Portland, Oregon.