Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Writing About the Natural World
with Richard Goodman
June 3 - 21, 2021
Thursdays and Mondays; 12:30-2:00 pm (Mountain Time)
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Tuition $550.00
Online registration for this program has closed. To check availability or if you would like further information, please call 505-983-1400 ext. 111.
Course Description
Whether it’s an endless desert vista, a bird’s morning song, a whale emerging from the sea, the bark of a weathered tree, or anything in between, the natural world calls to many of us. For many, it completes us. It stirs the deepest part of us with wonder and awe. Now, perhaps, more than ever.
The goal of this online workshop is to guide and help you summon those intimate and powerful reactions and turn them into words that move others as well. Using sensory-based exercises, the aim is for you to depict the natural world with prose that evokes what you see and how you see it—to make your individual, your unique, reaction universal. “If the emotions are strong enough,” wrote the poet Marianne Moore, “the words are unambiguous.”
It’s all in the details, and so attention will be directed to word choice, metaphors, and creating lyrical sentences. This is a workshop about passion and precision. We write, and each individual voice will be nurtured. We won’t neglect story, as many of our reactions to nature are tied to stories in our lives.
We use great nature writers as our guides in this search—Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, Gretel Ehrlich, Barry Lopez, as well as those from the past who led the way—John Muir, John James Audubon, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson. There is great nature writing in fiction as well, and we will draw from that. Since we are somewhat limited in our wanderings, we will draw from our own surroundings. Wherever we are, whether it be in a city, town or country, there is nature in some form.
Additional Information
WHO SHOULD ATTEND:
This program is open to anyone who wants to engage in a creative writing workshop.
Special Notes:
Six online group sessions. Enrollment is limited to 12 participants.
Zoom Video Conferencing software (available for no charge from Zoom.com) will be used to facilitate the class sessions. Further details will be emailed to registrants.
View updated Withdrawal and Transfer Policies for 2021 online programs.
Santa Fe Workshops always aims to produce a high-quality experience for our online attendees. That said, variables including regional and local internet provider speeds, traffic on Zoom's servers, and your own computing hardware can contribute to a less than ideal streaming event. While we do our best to minimize the impact of these variables, they are outside the control of Santa Fe Workshops.
Policies:
View Withdrawal and Transfer Policies for online programs.
For the convenience of participants, recordings of each class session are posted privately for two weeks after the end of each session. Santa Fe Workshops takes the recordings down after two weeks to protect the intellectual property of our instructors.
Tuition INFO:
Includes tax.
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about
Richard Goodman is the author of French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France, which the San Francisco Chronicle said is “one of the most charming, perceptive, and subtle books ever written about the French by an American.” He is also the author of The Soul of Creative Writing, A New York Memoir, and The Bicycle Diaries: One New Yorker’s Journey Through 9-11. He is co-editor of The Gulf South: An Anthology of Environmental Writing. He has published articles and essays in The New York Times, Harvard Review, Vanity Fair, Creative Nonfiction, Ascent, River Teeth, Hippocampus, Chautauqua, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Saveur. He has taught writing workshops in New York City, Louisville, New Orleans and Maine for the past thirty years.
Website: richardgoodman.org
