Communication Associate: Public Relations | Lori Melton | lmelton@d.umn.edu | (218) 726-8830
March 28, 2013 John Hatcher | Assistant Professor | Department of Writing Studies | 218-726-7325 | jhatcher@d.umn.edu
Kathryn Van Wert | Assistant Professor | Department of English | 218-726-8750| kvanwert@d.umn.edu
Kathleen McQuillan-Hofmann | Communication Associate | External Affairs | 218 726-7111 | kmcquill@d.umn.edu
Public Invited to "Writing Nature" Literary Nonfiction Symposium
DULUTH, MN – UMD's College of Liberal Arts will host a two-day literary nonfiction
symposium, "Writing Nature," on April 8 and 9 that explores creative nonfiction
writing with an environmental focus. The event features three writers whose work
engages with sustainability and environmentalism. Both symposium events are free
and open to the public.
On Monday, April 8 from 4–6 pm in the UMD Library Rotunda, the authors will read
excerpts from their work and discuss their writing in a public forum.
On Tuesday, April 9 from 12:30–1:30 pm in Bohannon Hall, Room 343, the authors
will lead a panel discussion about writing.
This event is part of series of events recognizing the 150th anniversary of the
Morrill Land Grant Act, which allowed for the creation of land-grant universities, but
speakers are not expected to address the Land Grant Act explicitly. The symposium
is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts at UMD, the UMD Writing Studies Club,
and the UMD Literary Guild.
About the Authors Christopher Cokinos, associate professor of English, affiliated faculty of the
Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona. Cokinos is the author of
three books of literary nonfiction, Hope Is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal
Chronicle of Vanished Birds (Tarcher/Putnam, 2000) and The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars (Tarcher/Penguin, 2009), as well as the forthcoming lyric
prose collection Bodies, of the Holocene (Truman). His poetry chapbook Held as
Earth (Finishing Line) is also forthcoming. He is at work on an anthology of
contemporary writing about the Sonoran desert, a collection of poems based on the
paintings of Rene Magritte and a new research nonfiction book tentatively titled
Tooth & Claw: The Lore, Lives and Fate of North America's Wild Cats.
Laura Erickson, Duluth author, contributing editor for BirdWatching Magazine, and
host of "For the Birds," the longest-running radio program on birding in the United
States. Erickson has been consumed with a passion for birds since she was a little
girl, and has dedicated her adult life to the love, understanding, and protection of
birds. She is contributing editor and columnist for BirdWatching Magazine, a
columnist for The Country Today, and author of seven books. She received the
National Outdoor Book Award for Sharing the Wonder of Birds with Kids and the
Northeastern Minnesota Book Award honorable mention for both For the Birds: An
Uncommon Guide and Twelve Owls, and is a recipient of Minnesota State Arts Board
grants. In 2009, while serving as Science Editor at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
she wrote the best-selling The Bird Watching Answer Book, and her National
Geographic Pocket Guide to Birds of North America is being released in April 2013.
She blogs for the American Birding Association and BirdWatching.
John T. Price, professor and director of the Creative Nonfiction Writing Program at
the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Price is the author of the memoirs Daddy Long
Legs: The Natural Education of a Father (forthcoming in May 2013 from Trumpeter
Books/Shambhala); Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships (Da Capo, 2008;
paperback U. of Iowa Press, 2012) and Not Just Any Land: A Personal and Literary
Journey into the American Grasslands (U. of Nebraska Press, 2004). Born in Fort
Dodge, Iowa, in 1966, he attended the University of Iowa, where he earned his B.A.
in Religion, M.F.A. in Nonfiction Writing and Ph.D. in English. A recipient of a
fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and other recognitions, his
nonfiction writing about nature, family, and spirit has appeared in many journals,
magazines, newspapers, and anthologies including Orion, The Christian Science
Monitor, Creative Nonfiction, The Iowa Review, and Best Spiritual Writing. He is a
professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he directs the
Creative Nonfiction Writing Program. He lives with his wife, Stephanie, and three
sons in the Loess Hills of western Iowa.
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