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Stories as Containers

In one of her wry, subversive essays, Ursula K. Le Guin proposes “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” suggesting that stories—like bags, baskets, and pots—were invented by our earliest ancestors as containers for things of value. Just as a woven sling might hold a baby or a clay bowl might hold seeds, so a story might hold a memory, discovery, lesson, journey, or joke; it might preserve knowledge vital to the survival of a person or a community. In this workshop, we will write brief stories—fiction, essay, or memoir—to hold things of value that you wish to preserve and pass along. To start us off, please bring from home a small object that bears significance for you.

Scott Russell Sanders lives in the hill country of southern Indiana, where he has written more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including A Conservationist Manifesto and Hunting for Hope. His most recent books are Dancing in Dreamtime, a collection of eco-science fiction stories, and Stone Country: Then & Now, a documentary narrative made in collaboration with photographer Jeffrey Wolin.

Learn more about Scott Russell Sanders