This September, PLAYA is pleased to offer writing workshops by award winning author Craig Childs and assistant to the poet laureate, Jennifer Elise Foerster. These workshops will support writers to immerse in the voice of a landscape and nurture their creative practice.
September 10-12, Craig Childs will teach Where the Land Meets the Eye, which will focus on learning to express a landscape through narrative and voice.
September 23-26, Jennifer Elise Foerster will instruct Writing in the Oasis. This writing intensive is an invitation for attention and deep listening to the ephemeral present/presence of time and place.
“We are pleased to have honored writers teach unique workshops that explore and exhibit the intersection of art and science,” said Interim Executive Director Elizabeth Quinn. “It will be fascinating to experience the work created by participants of PLAYA’s workshops.”
Workshops are sold separately; cabins on PLAYA’s campus can be rented for workshops. For more information and to register for workshops, visit
playasummerlake.org/product-category/workshops.
More about Craig Childs & Jennifer Elise Foerster
Craig Childs has published more than a dozen books of adventure, wilderness and science, including House of Rain and The Secret Knowledge of Water. His most recent is Virga & Bone: Essays from Dry Places. He has won the Orion Book Award, the Galen Rowell Art of Adventure Award, the Spirit of the West Award for his body of work and thrice the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. He is a contributing editor at Adventure Journal Quarterly, and his writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside and The New York Times, the latter calling him “a modern-day desert father.” He has a bachelor of arts in journalism from CU Boulder with a minor in women’s studies, and from Prescott College, a masters in arts in desert studies. He’s taught writing at University of Montana and the masters of fine arts programs at University of Alaska and Southern New Hampshire University. He lives off-grid in southwest Colorado.
Jennifer Elise Foerster is the author of two books of poetry, Leaving Tulsa (2013) and Bright Raft in the Afterweather (2018), both published by the University of
Arizona Press. Jennifer currently teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshop and is the Literary Assistant to the U.S. Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo. She received her Ph.D. in English and Literary Arts at the University of Denver and her masters of fine arts at Vermont College of the Fine Arts. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford. Foerster grew up living internationally, is of European (German/Dutch) and Mvskoke descent, and is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma. She lives in San Francisco.
More about PLAYA
Since 2011, PLAYA has supported new works and collaborative efforts in the arts and sciences through its residency program. In the next ten years, PLAYA will engage artists, scientists and the local area community through workshops, residencies, themed weekends, presentations, performances, exhibits and events. Through these activities, PLAYA inspires creativity and exploration at the nexus of art and science.
PLAYA is on the far western edge of Oregon’s Great Basin, an expansive and captivating landscape. PLAYA’s 76-acre campus lies at the base of Winter Rim (6,200-foot elevation) alongside the intermittent desert lake, Summer Lake.
Situated in a living lab on a campus designed to support creativity, PLAYA’s program participants can readily explore, experience and find inspiration from the geology. ecology, biodiversity, archaeology and desert landscape.