Nature Writing at Mt.

Roger’s Naturalist Rally

May 9, 2009 / 1:00 pm

Leaders: Fred First, Bob McKinney, Jim Minick, Dan Stryk, Rick Van Noy.

Part I: Reading Roundtable. Each writer will read/share from his work for 10-12 minutes. Afterwards, we’ll have
15-20 minutes for Questions & Answers with audience.

Part II: Two Workshops:

A. Playing with Words led by Jim Minick.
What poetry can teach any writer or teacher about metaphors and word play. Whatever genre, metaphors sweeten the
writing, making an ordinary scoop of a sentence into a deluxe banana split. How do you play with language to find
original metaphors? How do you see the world anew? These will be the central questions we tackle in hopes of finding
metaphors wherever we look, metaphors like a forked tree to tune the wind.
B. Flexible Form: Fresh Options of Written Expression led by Dan Stryk.

Might a spontaneously written journal entry about watching children hunt crawdads be most interestingly turned into
a poem or a piece of symbolic prose? Or might both be attempted, allowing a worthy idea to live two creative lives?
Dan will explain some special options of creative forms for expressing observations from the natural world. He strongly
urges participants to bring 1-3 handwritten pages of journalistically descriptive prose (not to be written as a poem, short
story, or essay yet, though it may later become one). Ideally these journal pages will be of intriguing perceptions, both
factual and imaginative, from their chosen morning Konnarock nature-walk. 

Presenter Bios:
Fred First is the author of Slow Road Home, A Book of Days (2006) and What We
Hold in Our Hands: a Slow Road Reader (2009). His professional background in-
cludes more than 12 years of teaching (biology) and almost 20 years as physical thera-
pist. At the naturalist rally, he lead the Grindstone wildflower field trip for 11 years
starting in 1975. He writes daily to his photo-weblog, Fragments from Floyd.

Bob McKinney’s latest book is If You Like Us, Talk About Us: The Life and Times
of Robert H. Porterfield. He has years of experience writing and photographing for
newspapers and outdoor magazines, mostly Sporting Classics. He has traveled from
Argentina to Alaska fishing and hunting and then writing about it.

Jim Minick is the author of two books of poetry, Her Secret Song and Burning Heav-
en. Also he has written a collection of essays, Finding a Clear Path, and edited All There Is to Keep by Rita Riddle. He
teaches at Radford University and lives in the mountains of Virginia with his wife and three dogs.      
                   
Originally from the “cornlands” west of Chicago, Dan Stryk now lives among the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest
Virginia (in Bristol) where he and his painter wife Suzanne. Dan is the author of seven collections of poems and prose
parables, including The Artist and the Crow, Solace of the Aging Mare, and Dimming Radiance, a fusion of Far Eastern
and Western writing forms.

Rick Van Noy is the author of A Natural Sense of Wonder: Connecting Kids With Nature Through the Seasons and
Surveying the Interior: Literary Cartographers and the Sense of Place. A Natural Sense of Wonder won the 2009 Reed
Award from the Southern Environmental Law Center, one of the finest awards for nature writing. From Titusville, New
Jersey, Rick moved to Virginia to teach English at Radford University and has stayed for the clean waterways and lovely
mountains, though he often wishes they were the kind that held snow.