8/14/2019 Mt Rogers Naturalist Rally Nature Writing Workshop

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Nature Writing at Mt. Rogers Naturalist RallyMay 9, 2009 / 1:00 pm

Leaders: Fred First, Bob McKinney, Jim Minick, Dan Stryk, Rick Van Noy.

Part I: Reading Roundtable. Each writer will read/share rom his work or 10-12 minutes. Aterwards, well ha15-20 minutes or Questions & Answers with audience.

Part II: Two Workshops:A. Playing with Words led by Jim Minick.What poetry can teach any writer or teacher about metaphors and word play. Whatever genre, metaphors sweeten twriting, making an ordinary scoop o a sentence into a deluxe banana split. How do you play with language to noriginal metaphors? How do you see the world anew? Tese will be the central questions we tackle in hopes o ndimetaphors wherever we look, metaphors like a orked tree to tune the wind.B. Flexible Form: Fresh Options o Written Expression led by Dan Stryk.

Might a spontaneously written journal entry about watching children hunt crawdads be most interestingly turned in

a poem or a piece o symbolic prose? Or might both be attempted, allowing a worthy idea to live two creative liveDan will explain some special options o creative orms or expressing observations rom the natural world. He strongurges participants to bring 1-3 handwritten pages o journalistically descriptive prose (not to be written as a poem, shostory, or essay yet, though it may later become one). Ideally these journal pages will be o intriguing perceptions, boactual and imaginative, rom their chosen morning Konnarock nature-walk.

Presenter Bios:Fred First is the author o Slow Road Home, A Book o Days (2006) and What WeHold in Our Hands: a Slow Road Reader (2009). His proessional background in-cludes more than 12 years o teaching (biology) and almost 20 years as physical thera-pist. At the naturalist rally, he lead the Grindstone wildfower eld trip or 11 years

starting in 1975. He writes daily to his photo-weblog, Fragments rom Floyd.

Bob McKinneys latest book is I You Like Us, alk About Us: Te Lie and imeso Robert H. Portereld. He has years o experience writing and photographing ornewspapers and outdoor magazines, mostly Sporting Classics. He has traveled romArgentina to Alaska shing and hunting and then writing about it.

Jim Minick is the author o two books o poetry, Her Secret Song and Burning Heav-en. Also he has written a collection o essays, Finding a Clear Path, and edited All Tere Is to Keep by Rita Riddle. Hteaches at Radord University and lives in the mountains o Virginia with his wie and three dogs.

Originally rom the cornlands west o Chicago, Dan Stryk now lives among the Blue Ridge Mountains o southwVirginia (in Bristol) where he and his painter wie Suzanne. Dan is the author o seven collections o poems and proparables, including Te Artist and the Crow, Solace o the Aging Mare, and Dimming Radiance, a usion o Far Easteand Western writing orms.

Rick Van Noy is the author o A Natural Sense o Wonder: Connecting Kids With Nature Trough the Seasons anSurveying the Interior: Literary Cartographers and the Sense o Place. A Natural Sense o Wonder won the 2009 ReAward rom the Southern Environmental Law Center, one o the nest awards or nature writing. From itusville, NeJersey, Rick moved to Virginia to teach English at Radord University and has stayed or the clean waterways and lovemountains, though he oten wishes they were the kind that held snow.