Land-Based Writing and Creative Writing Pedagogy

Friday, June 14, 2024, 2:00-3:30 pm ET
LB 646 (Webster Library), Concordia University

Come to an Un-Conference Panel!

With Catherine Bush, Kit Dobson, and Julija Šukys.

This three-person panel/discussion will highlight insights and strategies from our explorations in land-based writing and teaching, using techniques including those of mapping, and sensory exploration, and outdoor learning. As writers, we endeavour to respond meaningfully to the climate and ecological crises, both in our work and in the classroom, and to move beyond the framing of dystopic narratives. We have also begun to teach creative writing in new ways. 

Participants:

“Writing the Sensory.” Catherine Bush is the author of five novels, including the climate-themed novel Blaze Island (2020) and the forthcoming story collection Skin (2025). Currently the Writer-in-Residence Landhaus Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Germany, she is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Guelph. 

“Between Fiction and Non: Literary Approaches to Land.” Kit Dobson is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary. His previous book, Field Notes on Listening, was one of the CBC’s top nonfiction books of 2022, and he has just published his first novel, We Are Already Ghosts. 

“Flipping the Map: Lessons in Place-Writing.” Julija Šukys is the author of three books (Silence is Death: The Life and Work of Tahar Djaout, Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Šimaitė, and Siberian Exile: Blood, War, and a Granddaughter’s Reckoning). Her current book project is called Stone, Paper, Petal: In the Campus Shooting Archives. She is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin.