This year’s theme is Writing about Health: Activism, Advocacy, and Storytelling, and will include workshops, craft sessions, and readings with a focus on health and healthcare. The featured Keynote Speaker will be acclaimed Korean-American writer Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of Somebody’s Daughter, who has written on a variety of health topics, including advocacy for her son and others on the autism spectrum. Her new novel on the future of medicine is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster.

The conference will also include additional workshops and craft presentations by writers Nina Angela McKissock, Gillian Pidcock, Fran Quigley, Vince Mondillo, and myself. I will be leading a workshop titled, “Cellular Composition: Writing Water, Environment, and Self” — My workshop description follows:

Cellular Composition: Writing Water, Environment, and Self

 

Water is the most abundant molecule in our cells, accounting for roughly 70% of total cell mass. And given the permeability of our cell membranes, what’s in our water often ends up in our cells — making water pollution issues a matter of personal and public health. But while writing about the science behind these fluid boundaries is essential, it isn’t always effective in exerting positive change in environmental health policy. As Rachel Carson revealed with the public response to Silent Spring, people are more often moved by stories that engage their memories and emotions.

 

In the literary world, we often talk about “writing from the bones,” or “writing what we know on a cellular level.” This personal narrative —stories grounded in memory and emotion— will be the focus of our time together. In this workshop, we will examine the work of writers and scholars such as Sandra Steingraber, Rebecca Altman, Kristen Iversen, and others to learn how they have woven both science AND the self into their environmental health literature. We will study their methods and then embark on our own cellular compositions, using targeted writing exercises to generate strands of personal history to weave into our own environmental health stories.

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This year’s theme is Writing & Sustainability, and will include workshops, craft sessions, and readings about writing and sustaining ourselves and our world. Poet, essayist, and 2015 Guggenheim fellowship recipient Alison Hawthorne Deming will be the featured Keynote Speaker, with additional craft presentations by local writers Kate Brandes, Ben Cohen, and others. I will be co-presenting “Cross-Pollinating, A Conversation: How Literary Art and Science Can Enrich One Another” with Diane Husic, Dean of the School of Natural and Health Sciences at Moravian College and author of “A New Prosperity” Blog. Hope you can join us! Our session description follows:

Writers often begin their careers as something other than writers, and in the sub-genre of environmental literature, the pedigree of writers often includes a scientific background. Yet the scope of sustainability issues we face is challenging beyond a technical level, demanding that we seek other outlets to comprehend and communicate not only what we know as scientists, but what we feel as parents, teachers, and citizens of the world.

Panelists will discuss their evolution from professional scientists and researchers into writer-scientists, and how traversing disciplinary boundaries has enriched both their personal and professional lives. Topic areas to be covered will include using creative writing to metabolize and understand the life questions that science has uncovered, employing scientific research skills to inform our creative work, and using creative strategies to advocate our scientific understanding of important sustainability issues.

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