Whether the desire to write is to make simple note of one’s experience in the natural world or to write for a broader audience, this workshop will provide the writing tools to assist writers in sharing their stories of connection to this precious habitat we call home. This special writing workshop is designed for live participation, and limited to 12 individuals. Register at the button above.

Workshop Description

Perhaps there’s no more critical time in which we all must turn outward into the natural world to consider and give voice to what we see and feel. As climate change and the on-going pandemic finely focus our attention on our need for a healthy and accessible physical landscape, our connection to the physical landscape could never be more important. The workshop will provide an overview of the ways in which to observe, respond to, and write about one’s experience in the natural world. Emphasis will be on generating sensory detail and metaphor to elucidate and deepen the scenes and images of the intersection of sensory experience and the stories any physical landscape has to share with us.   

About the teacher: Mary B. Kurtz

Mary’s work has appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, The Hong Kong Review, The Colorado Sun, Ruminate Magazine, Braided Way, BlueHouse Journal, Speckled Trout Review, The Writers Workshop Review, and Ankle High, and Knee Deep: Women Reflect on Western Rural Living. Her second collection of essays, Apertures: Findings from a Rural Life, was recently released from Shanti Arts Publishing.

Her first collection of essays, At Home in the Elk River Valley: Reflections on Family, Place, and the West, was recognized as a 2012 Regional Nonfiction Finalist by the National Indie Excellence Book Award program. It was also the recipient of the Colorado Independent Publishers Association’s 2012 Bronze EVVY Award.

She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Regis University in Denver, Colorado.

Mary finds inspiration for her writing in the landscape of rural northwestern Colorado where she and her husband raise hay and quarter horses in the Elk River Valley. She and her husband have two adult children and four grandchildren.