Listening as a Writer

Listening as a Writer 

This workshop takes a sound-centered approach to writing. We’ll attune to our local soundscapes and ask: how do writers fuel their prose with the sounds of their lives? From spoken conversation to your biome’s winter-season acoustics, weekly listening exercises will highlight voices, music, and the environment, while linked writing prompts will help guide insights from the ear onto the page. In class meetings, we’ll discuss published nonfiction influenced by sound and participants will receive craft instruction. Participants are also encouraged to share reflections on their listening and will have the opportunity to share new work.

Corinna Cook is the author of Leavetakings, an essay collection (University of Alaska Press, 2020). Her essays blend research with reverie and have previously appeared in publications such as Flyway, Alaska Quarterly Review, Ocean State Review, and Alaska Magazine. Corinna’s critical writing appears in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies and New Writing: The International Journal for the Theory of Creative Writing. She writes about teaching for Pedagogy and American Literary Studies, and her freelance work appears in publications including Terrain.org, Essay Daily, and Yukon North of Ordinary.

Corinna is a former Fulbright Fellow, an Alaska Literary Award recipient, and a Rasmuson Foundation Individual Project Awardee. Her current projects-in-progress include an essay collection about Alaska-Yukon arts and histories (project origin story here), and a public history collaboration with Marie Adams Carroll about the early years of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission. Corinna holds degrees from Pomona College and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and she earned a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Missouri. She serves as core nonfiction faculty in Alaska Pacific University’s low-res MFA program in creative writing.

Is the registration fee an obstacle for you to attend this workshop? Fishtrap offers a limited number of scholarships to help with the cost. Contact Program Director Mike Midlo for more information. [mike@fishtrap.org]