How can our writing and reading connect us to the many beings who share our world? What if the ways we write could bring us closer to the more-than-human? What would our writing be if we let it entangle with nature all the way down through its roots?
What is this project?
Writing Toward Nature is a monthly newsletter about using the craft of writing to cultivate a deeper relationship with the more-than-human world. I’m interested in ways that we can bring nature, with all its nonhuman agency and awareness and beingness, further into the very elemental building blocks of our writing both on the page and in our practice. I want tree roots breaking up the foundations of our forms, mosses infiltrating the cracks of our tidy sentence sidewalks, fungal networks intercepting and intersecting our plot points.
I’m calling this newsletter Writing Toward Nature because that’s always been a key aim of my writing practice. I often feel as if I’m reaching toward a multi species communion that is never quite holdable but is always worth that impossible attempt. So much comes out of the reaching toward. And I’ve seen many other writers, in our time of ecological devastation, working toward similar goals in beautifully unique ways. I want to explore that with you.
Who am I?
I’m a writer and writing teacher. I’ve written about trees, folklore, parenthood, and gender in my Tree Talk column for Catapult, and published in Orion, Triquarterly, Electric Literature, and other journals. I’ve taught creative writing at the Portland Book Festival, the Loft, University of Washington, and Portland Community College. I’m currently finishing up my PhD in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University where I’m focused on precisely the questions this newsletter addresses.
The Details
I’m planning one letter a month that will come out on the full moon for the next year.
Each letter will include, essentially, a craft essay, but one that leans toward the mystical and magical, alongside a writing practice or prompt that might be generative and some notes on related conversations around the books and webs and suchnots that I think you might find interesting. This newsletter may wax and wane in response to feedback and engagement from you and my own interests and noticings (for instance, I may add monthly mini-lessons, interviews, or book reviews/recommendations) but the one main letter a month structure will stay in place this year.
As a subscriber, you’ll get each new letter sent directly to your inbox and be able to participate in ongoing conversations and discussions.
Please don’t hesitate to share this newsletter with anyone who may be interested!
