The Course: This nonfiction workshop will focus on the art of scientific storytelling in facing the challenges of the Anthropocene. Our aim is to learn together how to tell vivid science-smart stories across our differences and to explore the aesthetic, ethical, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of new knowledges. This generative workshop will offer prompts, exploration of traditional Indigenous knowledge, discussion of our works-in-progress, and brief talks about elements of nonfiction craft (image, character, scene, research, narrative voice, and reflection). Writers of essay, memoir, lyric essay, or hybrid forms are all welcome.

The Instructor: Alison Hawthorne Deming is the author of five nonfiction books and five poetry collections, including Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit, Stairway to Heaven, and A Woven World: On Fashion, Fishermen, and the Sardine Dress. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and Walt Whitman Award, she is Regents Professor Emerita at the University of Arizona. She is a frequent and long-term contributor to Orion. Photo by Bear Guerra.

Duration: This class meets once a week over six consecutive Wednesdays from 6-9 pm ET.

Application period: Applications closed. 

Click here for more details about Orion Online Writers’ Workshops.