9 am-3 pm, Wild Geese Room, Tamarack Wellness Center, 3575 Donald St # 120  Eugene, OR 97405-4753

You love to write. You love dogs. You’ve noticed all the bestsellers and blockbusters about dogs and other animals. You are working like a dog on your next character, book, or essay. This workshop is a unique opportunity to go from working like a dog to writing like (and about) one. Participate in this all-day workshop about writing dogs in to your story, article, screenplay, or other genre. Workshop leaders Debra Durham and Debra Merskin (bios below) will take you into the minds and lives of dogs so that you can bring them to life on the page, screen, and stage.

Our time together will be spent in presentations, discussion of readings, writing, workshopping, and other activities. We will focus on cultural and scientific understanding of dogs and dog-human relationships. We will also consider how dogs are used in American popular culture through readings and other media.

Books such as Garth Stein’s Racing in the Rain and Virginia Woolf’s Flush: A Biography prompt readers to think about what we have in common with four-footed friends and what we do not. Above all else they force us to acknowledge that animals-other-than-humans have points of view and distinctive ways of looking at the world. These concepts are at the very heart of this workshop. We will explore the psychological process of perspective-taking as a writerly skill and an empathetic tool. Individual and group activities will help us to expand our understanding of dogs and write from and about that experience in order to reveal richer and more authentic dogness that can be buried in stories and characters.

Want to be part of the pack? Find out more or register by emailing dmerskin@gmail.com. The cost for this workshop is $79.*  Registration is open until 2/18. For more information go to: www.Writelikeadog.blogspot.com Bring: your favorite writing tools (laptops are fine, pencil and paper preferred) and a photograph or other image of a dog who inspires you. Lunch is not provided.

BIOS: Debra Durham, PhD – Debra is a modern day Dr. Doolittle who specializes in the field of animal behavior. She has traveled the world studying animals in the wild and in captivity to understand how they cope with change and stress. She has published a number of scientific and popular articles and book chapters about animal behavior and human-animal relationships. She lives in Seattle with three dachshunds.

Debra Merskin, PhD, is associate professor in the School of Journalism & Communication at the University of Oregon. Her writing and research explore how and what we communicate about people and other animals. She has published a number of book chapters and popular press pieces about the human/animal relationship. Shares her home with three cats and Wicker, a Shetland sheepdog.

*$25 non-refundable deposit is needed to secure your space.

Through life’s twists and challenges, we try to understand what we missed and what we have. “Out of Refusal” is a collection of poetry from Carter McKenzie as she discusses life through her perspective as a mother and holder of a masters of English literature, providing an insightful and educated assortment of verse. “Out of Refusal” is a choice addition to any modern poetry collection. “Early”: You turn, the turn of leaves/heard through an open window./Across a sunlit room/shadows fly, departing birds.

PO Box 434, Monmouth, OR 97361
9780982106624, $15.00, www.airliepress.org

This review is from www.midwestbookreview.com

Maxine Scates‘ third collection of poetry, Undone was published last spring as part of the Western Michigan University’s ‘New Issues’ series. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Maxine came to Oregon in 1973. She taught at Lewis and Clark College and at Reed College for a number of years, and for more than a decade has conducted private workshops from her home in Eugene. She has won numerous awards for both her individual poems and for her previous collections Toluca Street and Black Loam, and has been included in anthologies, including most recently Poets of the American West. She devotes much time to editing and critical essay writing in addition to teaching. Maxine has been a vital presence in the local literary community as a quiet mentor to many poets. As Vern Rutsala says, “A new book by Maxine Scates is always a notable event,” and Dorianne Laux speaks of “a deft ability to glide between realms of perception tripped open by memory and emotion.”

John Addiego is a Corvallis-based novelist who, like Maxine Scates, was once Poetry Editor of the University of  Oregon’sNorthwest Review. His second novel Tears of the Mountain was recently published by Unbridled Books. It is partly a hair-raising adventure tale of the settling of Sonoma, California in the 1840’s, and partly a complex love story, all firmly grounded in details of the natural and human world, and based on the history of John’s early-pioneer family in the San Francisco area, including the first raising of the Bear Flag of California. John has published numerous stories and poems in literary journals, and he teaches students with special needs in the Corvallis area public schools.

As chair of PEN Northwest, a regional branch of PEN American Center, I administer an annual writer’s residency on the Rogue River homestead where I spent the winter I wrote about in Rogue River Journal. It is, as far as I know, the only long-term backcountry writing residency anywhere, and this particular where is a wonderful place. In exchange for an hour a day of routine upkeep of the property and its two cabins, the resident receives use of the homestead and its unparalleled solitude for a period of six months to one year, and the support of a $5,000 stipend. The biennial application process is open to all kinds of writers and poets, published much, little, or not.  Individuals, couples (with or without children), and partnerships of two may apply. The current application period, for the 2013 and 2014 residencies, began December 1, 2011 and ends March 1, 2012.

Click here for the full residency description and application guidelines.

Or paste in this address:  http://www.johndaniel-author.net/mdb-res.php

For photographs, go to:   http://writersconf.org/memdir/members/PNW00019.php

No one should apply without reading the full residency description.  The living situation requires a degree of self-reliance and is not for everyone.  Evidently the guidelines make this clear, because we get only 50 to 60 applications per cycle, of which we accept two.  For the right writer, the odds aren’t bad.  Maybe you know the right writer.

John Daniel

Here’s a link to a blog by Diane Lockward, New Jersey poet, blogger, who also posts an informative monthly newsletter.

This month’s blog and newsletter highlight Ingrid Wendt’s new book, Evensong, with a craft piece on Ingrid’s practice of saving words, lines, phrases she has to cut from a poem at hand but which she savors and which might find new life in a future poem.

Lockward features craft tips, books on writing, prompts, links,  in her monthly offerings. If you check out the blog, you will find a window to subscribe to the newsletter. It’s easy to unsubscribe, so you may try it or not, as time allows.

The Rag is available for download in PDF and ePub formats from the publisher’s site, Amazon.com and BN.com

http://raglitmag.com/index.html