Orion Returns to the Omega Institute June 2025 & Applications Are Open

Orion’s Environmental Writers’ Workshop returns to the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY from June 15th to 20th.

“Join a community of writers, improve your craft, and reimagine how you think about nature. Guided by award-winning instructors, the Orion Environmental Writers’ Workshop provides an intimate space to connect with writers, artists, and editors, spark creativity, and renew, illuminate, and deepen your relationship with place. This week-long workshop is cosponsored by the Omega Center for Sustainable Living.

Whether your passion is nonfiction, fiction, or poetry, the Orion Environmental Writers’ Workshop is a creative laboratory for anyone seeking to reflect their environments through their work. The course features breakout sessions dedicated to intensive craft practice, faculty readings and lectures, student readings, and panels on publishing.

Workshops seats will be limited in size so that each participant receives individualized attention, feedback, and focused time with faculty members and Orion editors to discuss whatever is on their minds. Throughout the week, literary agents and editors will stop by for panels and conversations to answer questions and offer advice on bringing out your work in the publishing world.”

Faculty include Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Sabrina Imbler, Michael Kleber-Diggs, Chris LaTray, Joe Wilkins, and Felicia Zamora.

You can learn more about the program and submit your application here.

'She Tells a Story' at the Cameron Art Museum!

Come see me on opening night, Thursday, July 28th, at 6:30pm at the Cameron Art Museum, where I’ll be included in the next iteration of the wildly beautiful 'She Tells a Story' exhibit. In case you've missed it, this is an ekphrastic show in which writers respond to visual art with short, literary pieces that complicate or extend interpretation. Some of my best friends--Chrissy Hennessey, Kathleen Jones, and Katie O'Reilly--and I will be adding our voices to a collection that already features powerhouses Nina DeGramont, May-lee Chai, Emily Smith, Wendy Brenner, and others. Some of the visual art, too, comes from our own, with work, for instance, by Minnie Evans and Abby Spangel Perry. Thanks to Holly Tripman for coordinating. 

Upcoming Panel with Jason Mott and Chris Ledbetter.

On October 21, I'll be on a panel about writing diverse characters with Jason Mott and Chris Ledbetter for the NC Writers' Network. We will be waiting for you at 11:30am in the Masonboro Room at the downtown branch of the New Hanover County Library.

Contributor copies, and a launch date.

27 Views of Wilmington: The Port City in Prose & Poetry came in the post the other day, along with news of our slam-style, 1 paragraph-each reading and launch at Pomegranate Books in Wilmington, NC on October 24th at 2pm. With thanks to Eno Publishers and Elizabeth Woodman for including me.

Here's the star-studded list of local writers in this anthology:

• John Jeremiah Sullivan

• Wendy Brenner

• Dana Sachs

• Jason Frye

• Karen E. Bender

• Daniel Norris

• Jean Jones

• James Leutze

• Emily A. Colin

• Emily Louise Smith

• Michael White

• Bertha Boykin Todd

• Robert Anthony Siegel

• Virginia Holman

• Ashley Wahl

• Kevin Maurer

• Jason Mott

• Rhonda Bellamy

• Wiley Cash

• Melodie Homer

• Gwenyfar

• Susan T. Block

• Philip Gerard

• Marlon Moore

• Nan Graham

• Sheila Webster Boneham

• Celia Rivenbark

• Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams

Latino Book Club Reading at Pomegranate Books, Feb 28th

Happily scheduled to give a reading this coming weekend in Wilmington. The event is hosted by the Latino Book Club and will be held at Pomegranate Books. So, on Saturday, February 28th from 3-4pm, come support Latino/a writers and browse a local bookstore and say hi to me, too, while you're at it.

Thanks to Dr. Amrita Das for the invitation and to Kathleen Jewell for providing the space (again!). Also, I'm pretty sure their new coffee shop is open.

The Latino Book Club fosters literacy and the increased representation of Latino culture in the U.S. You can be a part of that effort! The readings are in English.

I'm grateful to the North Carolina Writers' Network for keeping us "the writingest state." Become a member to keep up on readings in NC and to bolster the outstanding group of writers who call this state home. Let's fight the good fight against the creeps who are trying to run us all aground.

Reading at Georgia Southern

Later this week, I'm thrilled to be heading further south to give a reading at Georgia Southern! Grateful to the Department of Writing and Linguistics and to the Committee for College Life Enrichment for bringing me. And my favorite part of all this: EMMA BOLDEN LIVES AND WRITES AND TEACHES AND SOMETIMES CROCHETS MANATEES THERE.

So, if you're loafing around Statesboro, whistling at the sky, and wondering what to do, come say hello.

And even if you won't be nearby, would you just look at this poster? Because it is maybe the best poster of all time. It is pink and THE TAPE IS ALL FLOWERS. That's so Bolden, right there.