{"id":2404,"date":"2026-06-04T20:04:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T20:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mfa\/?page_id=2404"},"modified":"2026-06-05T19:19:48","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T19:19:48","slug":"2026-new-nature-writing-con","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mfa\/2026-new-nature-writing-con\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 New Nature Writing Con"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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July 19-21, 2026<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

All readings and conversations are FREE and open to the public <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Register for the conference’s six classes for $75<\/a><\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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The New Nature Writing Con<\/strong> is a project of EOU’s MFA Program in Creative Writing<\/a> and its special concentration in Landscape, Ecology, and Community. The conference seeks to highlight books and authors that are pushing the boundaries of eco-writing, broadly construed, in the Northwest and beyond, and to help reclaim or reinvent “nature writing” by turning from traditional homestead or a-walk-in-the-woods narratives to stories and explorations that are more inclusive, more experimental and interdisciplinary, more forward-thinking. The annual conference will consists of two days of readings, conversations, and workshops, bringing together EOU MFA faculty and visiting writers in Northeastern Oregon and connecting readers and writers especially along the I-84 corridor. A quarterly New Nature Writing Series runs during the academic year to continue the conversation. Both line ups regularly feature winners of the Oregon Book Awards, the Washington State Book Awards, and the Pacific Northwest Book Awards, as well as authors touring new or recent books. Most featured authors will be in conversation with EOU MFA faculty after their readings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We give thanks to our partners and sponsors, past and present. In 2022, the Union County Chamber of Commerce provided a seed grant for the initial La Grande Lit Week, which morphed into the New Nature Writing Conference to align with EOU and MFA program’s place-based emphasis. Other local partners have included Fishtrap, JaxDog Caf\u00e9 and Books, Liberty Theatre Cafe, Side A Brewery, Cook Memorial Library, La Grande Parks and Recreation, hq, The Local, Elgin Opera House, and Art Center East. EOU’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and its staff provide critical help. And of course a special thanks to our students and faculty who are our biggest supporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also humbly acknowledge the original inhabitants of the land that La Grande and EOU are upon: the Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Nez Perce people. We celebrate their traditions, languages, and stories. We acknowledge their continuing connection to this land, water, and community and pay our respects to these original stewards of northeastern Oregon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All readings and conversations are FREE and open to the public.<\/strong> Registration<\/a> is required for the conference\u2019s classes for $75. All classes will be held on the EOU campus in Zabel Hall room 107. Any questions may be directed to EOU MFA director Nick Neely, nneely@eou.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Third New Nature Writing Con <\/em><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Friday, June <\/strong>19<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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7-8 pm, hq<\/a>, 112 Depot Street<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

EOU MFA Faculty reading<\/strong> featuring Claire Boyles, Laura Da’, and Melissa Mathewson reading from new and forthcoming books. Claire Boyles<\/a>‘s second book and debut novel is\u00a0Appraisals<\/a><\/em> (W.W. Norton), forthcoming in August. Laura Da’<\/a>s latest poetry collection is Severalty<\/em><\/a> (U Arizona P 2025). Melissa Matthewson<\/a>‘s second essay collection The Fire Trees<\/a><\/em> is due out later this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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8-9 pm, hq<\/a>, 112 Depot Street<\/h4>\n\n\n\n


Annie Lampman<\/strong><\/a>‘s latest book is The Origin of Ava: A Novel<\/a><\/em> (Torrey House Press 2026), in which “three lives are drawn together by fate, flight, and the healing power of nature.” She is a professor of creative writing the Washington State University Honors College. Among other honors, she is the recipient of literature fellowship from the Idaho Commission on the Arts and a national wilderness artist\u2019s residency through the Bureau of Land Management. She lives in Pullman. She’ll be reading and then in conversation with Megan Kruse<\/strong>, author of the novel Call Me Home<\/em><\/a>.<\/em> FREE and open to the public<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Saturday, June 20<\/strong><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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9-10 am, Zabel Hall 107 (EOU campus)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Class: “Writing with Trees” with Miranda Schmidt<\/a><\/strong>. Registration required<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you find yourself lingering under trees with your notebook? Would you like to be more intentional about incorporating trees into your writing process? There is a long history of kinship between trees and humans, particularly as it relates to our words. Our paper is frequently made from trees. The Celtic Ogham is an alphabet based on trees. And our myths often describe us as created or receiving wisdom from trees. Many contemporary writers, like Ada Lim\u00f3n and Robert MacFarlane, speak about the ways trees have influenced their writing process. In this generative workshop, we\u2019ll explore historic, folkloric, and embodied connections between trees and writing, reflect on our personal relationships with trees, learn about different practices for writing with trees, and generate new work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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10-11 am, Zabel Hall 107 (EOU campus)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Class: “The Remote & Forgotten: Writing Place as Character” with Annie Lampman<\/a><\/strong>. Registration required<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remote and forgotten settings and their related flora, fauna, natural phenomena, and human dramas often demonstrate both intense beauty and intense hardship, highlighting everything in society over which we celebrate or despair. In fiction and creative nonfiction, these places often have everything to do with who the characters are <\/em>and what the characters do<\/em>. In this class, we will explore writing about remote\/lost settings where the natural world is a driving force, inhabiting the story as much as the characters, functioning as a main force\/main character in and of itself, shaping the story\u2019s emotional tenor, functioning as its beating heart. By knowing, intimately and personally, a story\u2019s place of being, we can discover\/uncover what we and our characters are really trying to say, and why we’re trying to say it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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11 am-12 pm, Lewis Auditorium (Zabel Hall 101)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Katherine Larson<\/strong><\/a> is the author most recently of Wedding of the Foxes: Essays<\/em><\/a> (Milkweed 2025), “an elegant collection of lyric essays that embraces fractures, contradictions, and the interconnectedness of life on Earth.” She is the recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for her first book Radial Symmetry<\/em> as well as a Ruth Lily Fellowship and Kate Tufts Discovery Award, among other honors. She lives in Tucson. She’ll be reading and then in conversation with Melissa Matthewson<\/strong><\/a>. FREE and open to the public<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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12-1 pm, Zabel Foyer<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Light conference luncheon for registrants and the EOU MFA community. Registration required<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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1-2 pm, Lewis Auditorium (Zabel Hall 101)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Miranda Schmidt<\/a><\/strong>‘s debut novel is Leafskin<\/a><\/em> (Stillhouse Press 2025), “a tale of queer love, new motherhood, and ecological interconnectedness.” She is also the author of a poetry chapbook and book of spells, The Cemetery Cure<\/em>. Her writing has appeared in Triquarterly, Orion, Electric Literature, Catapult,<\/em> and other places. She lives in Portland. She’ll be reading and then in conversation with Molly Reid<\/a><\/strong>. FREE and open to the public<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2-3 pm, Zabel Hall 107 (EOU campus)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Class: “Writing Toward Your Dead Nature Writers: Literary Ancestors as Craft” with Melissa Matthewson<\/a><\/strong>. Registration required<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All writers carry the literary traditions that have influenced us, the dead writers whose poems and sentences live in our bodies. It\u2019s a kind of entanglement: you adore their work, you\u2019re in conversation with them, and you\u2019ve absorbed their craft, sometimes unconsciously. Using Thoreau and Whitman as case studies, this class explores locating your literary ancestors, identifying your entanglements, and writing work that claims and complicates that lineage. Through close reading of short passages and generative exercises, we’ll practice the moves these writers made including the long accumulative line, the self as witness and subject, the body inside the landscape. We\u2019ll complicate their gestures and write toward our own voice. The goal is to be in a sensuous and conscious relationship with them. Bring your obsession, entanglements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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3-4 pm, Zabel Hall 107 (EOU campus)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Class: “Haibun Workshop” with Katherine Larson<\/a><\/strong>. Registration required<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this workshop, we will explore the haibun, a Japanese form that combines prose and haiku, inviting writers to dwell in the tension between movement and stillness, narrative and image, expansion and compression. Originating in the travel writing of Matsuo Bash\u014d, haibun encourages us to navigate personal landscapes, whether external journeys or interior explorations, in ways that resist closure and invite discovery. Through discussion, reading, and guided writing exercises, we\u2019ll experiment with haibun as a generative practice. We will consider how attention to place, landscape, and the more-than-human world can enrich the form, and how contemporary haibun writers adapt it in innovative ways through erasure, visual experimentation, and hybrid approaches while preserving its contemplative essence. Participants will leave with a draft, a deeper understanding of the genre, and fresh possibilities for their own writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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7-9 pm, hq<\/a>, 112 Depot Street<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

EOU MFA Thesis Reading\u00a0<\/strong>featuring graduating students\u00a0Katy Anastasi<\/strong>,\u00a0Megan Baird<\/strong>,\u00a0Amy Bowden<\/strong>, Lindsay Costello<\/strong>,\u00a0John Culp<\/strong>,\u00a0Delilah Deckert<\/strong>,\u00a0Kea DeLong<\/strong>,\u00a0Arnie Farnam<\/strong>,\u00a0Mike Hodges<\/strong>,\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Janice Rubin<\/strong>, Aedalin Solaris<\/strong>, and\u00a0Lindy Williams<\/strong>. FREE and open to the public.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sunday, June 21<\/strong><\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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9-10 am, Zabel Hall 107 (EOU campus)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Class: “On Walking the Land and Memory Palaces: Considering Land and History in the Creative Process and Introducing Place as a Foundational Element of Inquiry and Creativity” with Laura Da’<\/strong><\/a>. Registration required<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This class is informed by the observational curiosities and imperatives of seasonality and land. <\/strong>This course encourages awareness of place as a foundational method for crafting new work. The creation, crossing, and elimination of boundaries of language and narrative will underpin writing prompts and extension activities designed to encourage new work and invigorate the revision process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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10-11 am, Zabel Hall 107 (EOU campus)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Class: “If these Walls Could Talk: The House as More than Setting” with Molly Reid<\/a><\/strong>. Registration required<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In our stories, houses are often the backdrop to our characters’ familial or romantic drama–or, if we’re writing nonfiction, our own. How can we go beyond this and mine the houses of our past and the houses in our imagination to enrich our story worlds, uncover memory, reveal character\u2014or reveal the house as<\/em> character? In this class, we\u2019ll be looking at some examples of how writers go beyond house as backdrop, and then we\u2019ll experiment with some writing exercises ourselves to bring our stories (and houses) to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Register here for the conference’s six classes.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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See the line up of the second New Nature Writing Con<\/a> (2025)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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See the line up of the first New Nature Writing Con<\/a> (2024)<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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July 19-21, 2026 All readings and conversations are FREE and open to the public Register for the conference’s six classes for $75 The New Nature Writing Con is a project of EOU’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and its special concentration in Landscape, Ecology, and Community. The conference seeks to highlight books and authors that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":519,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2404","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/519"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2404"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2439,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2404\/revisions\/2439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/mfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}