Friends of the Mad River announces a new writers’ workshop series: an opportunity for our community to gather and cultivate an attentiveness to place through a ritualized creative writing practice. Each session will be guided by an author from the Vermont literary community, who will come to the group with a meaningful passage of text which will then serve as a touchstone for an hour or so of independent writing time.

These sessions, seven total, will be scheduled around the rhythm of the natural seasons: beginning with the spring equinox and ending with the fall equinox. Guest authors will include Sydney Lea, the former poet laureate of Vermont; Sean Prentiss, author and professor at Norwich; Noah Warren, creative writing professor at UVM; and many more.

These seven sessions will hopefully culminate in some kind of informal community “zine” or portfolio, featuring our participants’ work over the course of the year. You can sign up for this event as a full “series,” which is recommended, or you can sign up for individual sessions as your schedule allows. No professional experience with creative writing is necessary: simply come with a pen and an open heart.

Please stay tuned for forthcoming dates and venues. The first session will be held at Moretown Library on March 20th, and will feature Prof. Sean Prentiss, author of Finding Abbey: A Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave (2015).

You can register for this first event, or for the entire series, here: https://forms.gle/14PqtBCJ4UUqAqxF8

Please consider supporting the work of our guest authors with a recommended $30 donation per session, but don’t hesitate to come for free, if you need to.