Orion Environmental Writers’ Workshop
June 19-24, 2022
The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York
Join a community of writers and artists, 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, poetry, or photography, 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 will be limited to twelve participants so that each participant receives individualized attention, feedback, and focused meetings with faculty members and Orion editors to discuss manuscripts or projects. Throughout the week, literary agents and editors will stop by and offer advice on bringing out your work in the publishing world.
HOW TO APPLY
The application window is now closed.
**Nonfiction, fiction, and poetry workshops are full, but we have a couple of spots open for photography. Contact workshops@orionmagazine.org to apply.**
Workshops will be offered in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and immersive photography. Please submit a cover letter and sample of your work through Submittable. For prose, please send a 1,000 – 1,500 word writing sample; for poetry, send up to six pages of poetry; and for photography, send a link to a portfolio or Google drive, or upload up to six images.
Acceptances will be made on a rolling basis and applicants will be notified whether they have been admitted within a month of applying.
Note that a variety of housing options at different price points are available at the Omega Institute. Those who apply earlier will be able to choose their housing sooner. Some housing options may sell out faster than others.
Some financial aid is available, but in limited numbers. Please reach out if you’d like to discuss.
More questions related to Orion workshops? Contact us.
2022 FACULTY
Elizabeth Bradfield (poetry) is the author of Toward Antarctica, Once Removed, Approaching Ice, Interpretive Work, and Theorem, a collaboration with artist Antonia Contro. She co-edited Broadsided Press: Fifteen Years of Poetic and Artistic Collaboration, 2005-2020 with Alexandra Teague and Miller Oberman. In 2023, Mountaineers Books will publish Cascadia: A Field Guide Through Art, Ecology and Poetry, which Liz is co-editing with Derek Sheffield and CMarie Fuhrman. Her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize and a Stegner Fellowship. Founder of Broadsided Press, Liz works as a naturalist/guide and teaches creative writing at Brandeis University.
Geffrey Davis (poetry) is the author of Night Angler, winner of the James Laughlin Award, and Revising the Storm, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. He has received fellowships from Bread Loaf, Cave Canem, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Whiting Foundation for his involvement with The Prison Story Project. His poems have appeared in New England Review, New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Raised by the Pacific Northwest, Davis teaches at the University of Arkansas and with The Rainier Writing Workshop. He also serves as Poetry Editor for Iron Horse Literary Review.
Shelley Lawrence Kirkwood (photography) earned her BA with a concentration in photography from Hampshire College and her MFA from the University of Arizona. She has served in the curatorial departments of the Center for Creative Photography and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Her colorful, dynamic, botanical prints examine the tension between the ephemeral and the eternal as we experience it in the landscape. Kirkwood’s work has appeared in numerous publications, and has been exhibited internationally—most recently at Saatchi Gallery in London. Kirkwood lives and works in Amherst, Mass.
Michael Kleber-Diggs (nonfiction) is the author of Worldly Things, which was awarded the 2020 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. He was born and raised in Kansas and now lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His work has appeared in Lit Hub, the Rumpus, Rain Taxi, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Water~Stone Review, Midway Review, North Dakota Quarterly and a few anthologies. Michael teaches poetry and creative non-fiction through the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop.
Scott Russell Sanders (nonfiction and fiction) is the author of more than twenty books of fiction, essays, and personal narrative, including Hunting for Hope, A Conservationist Manifesto, A Private History of Awe, and Earth Works: Selected Essays. His most recent book is The Way of Imagination, a reflection on healing and renewal in a time of social and environmental upheaval. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Indiana University, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Katrina Vandenberg (nonfiction) is the author of two books of poems, The Alphabet Not Unlike the World and Atlas. Her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in American Poetry Review, The American Scholar, Orion, Poets and Writers, and other magazines. She has received fellowships from the McKnight, Bush, and Fulbright Foundations; been a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference; and held residencies at the Amy Clampitt House and the MacDowell Colony. She is the poetry editor of Water~Stone Review and a professor in The Creative Writing Programs at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
LOGISTICS
Travel: The Omega Institute is easily accessible. It is conveniently located in Rhinebeck, New York, with easy access to major airports and public transportation.
Tuition and Board: Fees vary based on housing, and range from $1490 – $2500.
When successful applicants call Omega, they will be given various housing options for their 5-day stay, including private cabins, dorm rooms, and tent space. Fees are all-inclusive, and include three meals a day, optional daily classes in yoga or tai chi and access to amenities like tennis courts, a basketball court, walking trails, boating on the lake, the Ram Dass Library, the Sanctuary for meditation and an Omega Art Bag with art supplies for drawing or painting.
Campus also offers a Wellness Center with massage and other services for an additional cost.
Meals: The Omega Institute offers local, organic, sustainable, nutrient-dense, artisanal, and whole-food meals, and are able to accommodate a variety of tastes, dietary needs, and food allergies.
More questions related to Orion workshops? Contact us.