September 3-8, 2025
Registration opens December 5, 2024.
Ana Maria Spagna guides your Outpost writing this year, and Winding Waters River Expeditions (WWRE) leads the river trip. Winding Waters River Expeditions is a family owned and operated whitewater rafting outfitter based in Joseph, Oregon. They are experienced pros, love what they do, and know what it takes to provide a quality rafting experience.
You will raft down one of the world’s most dramatic and rugged canyons while receiving personal instruction from author Ana Maria Spagna. To experience the natural world from the bottom of Hells Canyon, the deepest river canyon in the United States, is sure to stir the imagination and provide stories for a lifetime. As hosts of the trip, WWRE will expertly navigate the canyon, provide delicious meals, and bring you to the best camp spots on the river. The work that will emerge is sure to paint a complex beautiful landscape, true writing of place.
Writing Through Time
The Snake River through Hells Canyon runs through place, yes, an incomparable landscape, and also through time: historical, geological, cosmic, and current. As we take time away from the responsibilities and distractions of our everyday lives, we’ll focus on ways we can embrace time on the page. How can we encompass the vastness mapped out on canyon walls and the bright night sky, and the magic of one silent moment? How do we honor the human and more-than-human beings who came before us and will come after us? How can we engage the changes in the larger world? We’ll read and discuss writers who grapple with these questions in wildly different ways. We’ll write to prompts, together and alone, and share what comes to us in a spirit of wonder and collaboration. Writers in every genre and any experience level are welcome. Please bring a journal that can get wet.
Please download the 2025 Outpost on the Snake River Participant Packet for more details. This document covers :
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- Instructor Bio
- Synopsis of the workshop
- Meals
- Lodging
- Getting Here & Opening Day Schedule
- How to Prepare
- Packing List & Tips
- Medical & Travel Insurance
- Pre-Purchase Fishing Licenses
- Libations and Treats
- Tipping /Gratuities
- Terms and Conditions/Refund and Cancelation Policy
- Notice of Non-Discrimination and Code of Conduct
- Suggested Reading List
- Interesting Hells Canyon Information
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About Ana Maria Spagna
Ana Maria Spagna writes about wilderness, work, community, and history. She is the author of nine books including most recently, Pushed: Miners, a Merchant and (Maybe) a Massacre, an investigation of violence against Chinese miners in the Inland Northwest, Reclaimers, stories of elder women reclaiming sacred land and water, Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus, winner of the River Teeth literary nonfiction prize, and three essay collections, Uplake, Potluck , and Now Go Home. Her first novel for young people, The Luckiest Scar on Earth, about a 14 year-old snowboarder and her activist father, appeared in 2017. Her first chapbook of poetry, Mile Marker Six, appeared in 2021. Ana Maria’s work has been recognized by the Society for Environmental Journalists, the Nautilus Book Awards, and as a four-time finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She lives with her wife, Laurie, in Stehekin, a remote community in Washington’s North Cascades.
