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ROBIN CODY
The Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission in 2005 picked Robin Cody’s Ricochet River, a novel, as one of the 100 essential Oregon books in our 200 years. His Voyage of a Summer Sun, about the Columbia River, won the 1996 Oregon Book Award for literary non-fiction. Robin was born in St. Helens and raised in Estacada. He taught high school English for a decade at the American School of Paris and was Dean of Admissions at Reed College while trying—failing re-writing —again and again, over 17 years altogether—to get that novel published. Robin writes magazine articles about Oregon characters in Northwest places. He drives a special ed school bus and lives in Portland with his wife, Donna.

Writing in Nature
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Fiction or non-fiction, it doesn’t matter. The best writing weaves PLACE into narrative to make literature. Get the rivers right—or the woods, the garden, the critters, the flora—to enliven and deepen your story. Ken Kesey, Kathleen Moore, Annie Dillard and Barry Lopez are masters at writing in (not necessarily about) nature. That’s what my own work aspires to. Students may—but don’t have to—bring to this workshop an introductory two or three pages of prior writing. The main emphasis, though, will be on launching new work. And having fun doing it.

BRENDA MILLER is the author of Season of the Body (Sarabande Books, 2002) and co-author of Tell it Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction (McGraw-Hill, 2003). Her newest collection of essays, Blessing of the Animals, is forthcoming from Eastern Washington University Press. Her work has received four Pushcart Prizes and has been published in such journals as Fourth Genre, Creative Nonfiction, The Sun, Utne Reader, Georgia Review, and Witness. She is an Associate Professor of English at Western Washington University and serves as Editor-in-Chief of The Bellingham Review.

“Voice Lessons”: a creative nonfiction workshop
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Memoirist Lawrence Sutin writes, “The truth of writing is the discovery of one’s voice—a voice that is unimpeded by anger, the desire for praise, or the fear of self-disclosure. This is the voice that knows more than we do, that manifests itself only in the act of writing.” Together, we will court this sense of discovery through intensive writing sessions that generate rich and unexpected work, and we may do some meditations that will help us navigate toward the core of self from which the “true voice” emerges. We will shape some of these unexpected writings into polished pieces and hold concluding sessions in which participants spontaneously respond to this new and wild work.

PETER CHILSON was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger, West Africa, and later a news correspondent there. His first book, Riding the Demon: On the Road in West Africa, won the Associated Writing Programs Award in nonfiction. Disturbance-Loving Species, a collection of short stories and a novella, received the 2006 Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize for fiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. His essays and short stories have appeared in The American Scholar, The North American Review, Audubon, High Country News, Rain City Review, and elsewhere. Chilson currently coordinates the undergraduate creative writing program at Washington State University.

Short Fiction–
“Owning the Story”
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How do fiction writers give their work a feeling of authenticity? Some call it a sense of believability or integrity. Research in fiction—the task of doing extra work to develop knowledge of subject, character, and setting—cannot replace imagination. But it certainly helps to give your work a stronger authority, a sense that you own your characters, your setting, and story. It helps, whether writing fiction or nonfiction, to be a student of the human condition. Our workshop will involve exercises, short studies of works by other writers, and feedback on our own work to understand how writers “own” a story. Our goal is that every workshop member produce one new “owned” story in the workshop week.

LUIS ALBERTO URREA, 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, is a prolific and acclaimed writer who uses his dual-culture life experiences to explore greater themes of love, loss and triumph. Born in Tijuana, Mexico to a Mexican father and an American mother, Urrea has published extensively in all the major genres. The Devil’s Highway, his 2004 non-fiction account of a group of Mexican immigrants lost in the Arizona desert, won the 2004 Lannan Literary Award and was named a best book of the year by The Los Angeles Times. His most recent book, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, is a historical novel that tells the story of Teresa Urrea, sometimes known as The Saint of Cabora and the Mexican Joan of Arc. Luis is a frequent and popular reader and teacher at Fishtrap.

Ghosts and Small Gestures: Trusting the Spirit of Writing
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We often miss the message that the spirit of Writing sends us because we are looking for volcanoes, avalanches, epic novels, explosions.  But the muse often whispers, or hides her voice in the sound of wind, water, trees.  This cross-genre class intends to open our eyes, ears and minds to the endlessly singing voice of Writing.  Through writing, meditations, conversation, play, memory, confession, we will open our notebooks to the bounty of the green fuse that burns through the world.  It works if you let it.  The best way to get started in this work is to...play

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MARV ROSS is a composer, musician, playwright, and producer. In 1981 he formed Quarterflash with his wife Rindy, and their debut album went platinum with four top-forty hits. He has written for stage, television, and film, with songs in Nightshift, Gremlins, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. In 1993, Marv won an ASCAP award for his first musical, Voices from the Oregon Trail. In 2007, his musical, The Ghosts of Celilo, was presented by Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland. Marv and Rindy received Western Oregon University’s Alumni Award of Excellence for their
contributions to Oregon music and history.

Tools for Contemporary Songwriting–Learning the Process

The workshop will use a wide range of practical exercises and methods to enhance the songwriter’s listening and writing skills. Contemporary songwriting forms will be analyzed and applied in challenging but non-threatening exercises. An electronic piano and guitar will be available, and students are encouraged to bring guitars or other chordal instruments, but proficiency on an instrument is not required. The emphasis will be on the “lyric” aspect of composing. Topics include: learning to listen on different levels; developing a process to write songs; ways to “stay fresh” and find new directions; using poetry as an inspiration; organizing the creative process; developing skills of co-writing; the role of studio production in the songwriting process; songwriting as therapy.

JANE VANDENBURGH
has published nonfiction and criticism in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The Threepenny Review, among other journals. Her novels are Failure to Zigzag and The Physics of Sunset. A new book of stories called A Pocket History of Sex in the 20th Century will be published in January 2009.

Becoming a Novelist—A Year-long Workshop

This is a new and experimental workshop. Participants will spend one week at Fishtrap this summer, meet for a January weekend in Portland, and finish the workshop—and the first draft of a full-length book—at Fishtrap 2009. During the year participants will have 8 exchanges of materials—chapters from Jane’s forthcoming Architecture of the Novel, and chapters of their own books. Participants will be juried in, with a $50 reading fee. For full information on application, fees, and content of this workshop, click here or call the office (541-426-3623).

ANITA HELLE is the editor of The Unraveling Archive: Essays on Sylvia Plath. She has published articles, reviews, and critical essays on a range of modern and contemporary writers, including Kay Boyle, Louise Gluck, William Stafford, and Audre Lorde. Anita teaches 20th century literature and advanced writing at Oregon State University.

PETER SEARS teaches teachers for Community of Writers in Portland, and is on the faculty of the MFA writing program at Pacific University. He is the author of The Brink, Tour: New and Selected Poems, and Secret Writing. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, Orion, and New York Times among others.

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A Reading and Writing Poetry Workshop

Two poems by well-known poets will be handed out in class for each day of the workshop. The next day, we will discuss the two poems and look at them as models for writing poems. Those who wish may write a poem using the model as springboard. Strategies for launching poems will be an ongoing subject, as will be approaches to revising poems. Clearly,
no prior poetry writing experience is necessary for this workshop. Writing exercises will be provided for those interested.

PUALANN PETERSEN'S books of poetry are The Wild Awake, Blood-Silk, and A Bride of Narrow Escape, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. A Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and the recipient of the 2006 Holbrook Award from Oregon Literary Arts, Paulann serves on the board of Friends of William Stafford, organizing the annual January Stafford Birthday events. She’s been on faculty at the Creative Arts Community at Menucha, and has given workshops for Oregon Writers Workshop, Mountain Writers Series, and the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College, among many others.

Downstream: Writing with the Current
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Join Paulann Petersen in a poetry workshop dedicated to creation, reflection, and craft. Using notable poems as springboards, we’ll turn ourselves loose in the river of words, letting language carry us along in its current. Each day we’ll generate considerable new work. We’ll also look at your poems—ones you’ve written at Fishtrap, or ones you’ve brought with you—for ways to strengthen them through revision. We’ll linger in a few eddies, examining significant elements of craft such as line integrity, dramatic strategy, voice and trope. The goal is to have each participant leave the workshop with both an outpouring of new material, and some new tools for revision.

Traditional Bookbinding

Participants will learn the basics of traditional bookbinding while creating a sturdy hardback journal of their own. There will be plenty of opportunities to personalize your book and you’ll leave the class series armed with the skills and information to make more books on your own. This is a great primer for those who may wish to bind small editions of their own writing or just more blank books for
their own use.

AMY KLAUKE MINATO is author of a poetry collection, The Wider Lens, and a creative nonfiction book, Siesta Lane, which is forthcoming from Skyhorse Press this fall. She holds both an MFA in Creative Writing and an MS in Environmental Studies. Amy has been published in Wilderness Magazine, Poetry East, Windfall, Cottonwood, and Oregonian Poetry Corner among others. She and her family split their time between Portland, Oregon and the Wallowa Mountains.

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Write the World–
For 8 to 14 year-olds

Ever really watch an osprey collect a fish? It turns the fish face forward for less wind resistance on its flight. In this workshop we’ll observe, collect data, take notes, eavesdrop and speculate on the natural and human worlds at Wallowa Lake. We may go up the tram, lounge on the beach, snoop at the bumper cars and/or hike to a heart-stopping view. After each experience, we’ll pour words onto paper, share them, cut and paste and polish, then come back and do it again the next day. Finally, we’ll awe the adults at open mic (optional).

Tom Spanbauer is a Pulitzer Nominated author and the founder of Dangerous Writing. As a writer he has explored issues of race, of sexual identity, of how we make a family for ourselves in order to surmount the limitations of the families into which we are born. Tom has four published novels and is at work on a book about his “Dangerous Writing” program. His introductory workshop is an underground legend among emerging writers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

Frank X Walker is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and Spalding University and a founding member of the “Affrilachian Poets.” He is the author of four poetry collections, including Buffalo Dance: the Journey of York, and When Winter Come: The Ascension of York. A popular reader and instructor at previous Fishtraps, Frank X is a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry recipient, and currently serves as a Writer-in-Residence at Northern Kentucky University.

Jim Hepworth has been publisher at Confluence Press in Idaho for many years, has taught and read at Summer Fishtrap, fished Wallowa streams with Greg Keeler, Craig Lesley, and Jack Shoemaker. He once taught a workshop on “Angling and Literature.” Marc Jaffe came to the first Summer Fishtrap as a publisher at Houghton Mifflin, after a distinguished career at New American Library, Bantam, and Random House. He’s a long-time Fishtrap advisor and regular participant.

Marc Jaffe came to the first Summer Fishtrap as a publisher at Houghton Mifflin, after a distinguished career at New American Library, Bantam, and Random House. He’s a long-time Fishtrap advisor and regular participant.

Anita Leverich was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Rwanda as the country descended into chaos. She has an MFA from the University of Montana, and now lives in her
native Kansas City.

Sara Miller was a founding Board Member of Fishtrap. She is a poet and has studied poetry translation at the University of Iowa and in Ecuador.

Lawson Fusao Inada is an emeritus professor of writing at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, currently the poet laureate of Oregon, and the author of five books: Legends from Camp, Drawing the Line, In This Great Land of Freedom, Just Into/Nations and Before the War.

Greg Keeler is a poet, songster, composer of Montana operas and author of a book on Richard Brautigan. David Quammen says that “Greg Keeler has written lunatic masterpieces. He sings pretty good for such a big guy. He’s my absolute favorite practitioner of whatever the hell it is he practices, in all of America.”

Pramila Jayapal is the founder of Hate Free Zone Washington, a grassroots nonprofit organization that was created in response to the backlash against immigrant communities of color. Jayapal was born in India, and raised in India, Indonesia and Singapore. Her memoir, Pilgrimage to India: A Woman Revisits Her Homeland (Avalon) received critical acclaim on several continents and reached the bestseller lists in her homeland.

Fellowships
Each year up to five Fishtrap Fellowships are awarded. Fellows receive room and board for the Fishtrap week, workshop registration, and featured reading spots. The impressive list of past Fellows includes Kathleen Tyau, Geronimo Tagatac, Bette Husted, Vivian McInerny, David Memmott, Evelyn Sharenov, and Kelly Sievers.

The call for Fellowship applications goes out in November and submissions are due in February. There is no reading fee, the judging is “blind,” and Fellowships are awarded on the basis of writing quality alone. This year there were 295 submissions! Every one was read by at least two local judges—current and former Fishtrap board members. Final judges in 2008 are Sue Armitage of Washington State University and Bob Greene of Bookpeople in Moscow, Idaho. Fellows will be announced on the Fishtrap web site.

Scholarships
Fishtrap awards a few scholarships—most of them partial—each year on the basis of need and/or student status. The Sally Bowerman Scholarship, given in honor of a long-time Fishtrap supporter and regular workshop participant, goes to a working woman; the Frank Conley and Bryn Lunde scholarships are used to help high school and college students attend Fishtrap workshops. Frank was on the original Fishtrap Board and later managed the office and kept the books; Bryn Lunde was a local high school student with a passion for music and words. If you are interested in a scholarship, please contact Fishtrap staff as soon as possible. We will want to know what you need and what you want to do at Summer Fishtrap.

Registration opens April 1. Many workshops were so popular last year that they filled before some of you even had a chance to consider them. This year we will regard all registrations as equal until April 15. On that date if a workshop is more than full, we will draw names from those who indicate that workshop as their first choice. After that, it is strictly first come, first served.

Click here to register securely online.

Click here for a printable registration form to mail in with your payment.

If you would like to pay your balance online, please go here.

Fees & Payment

Fishtrap makes a concerted effort to make events and workshops affordable. In so far as possible, we want attendance at Fishtrap to be determined by desire, and not limited by means. Prices are on the registration form. A $100 non-refundable deposit will reserve a spot for you for a workshop and/or for the Gathering. Final payment is due June 30. We do accept VISA and MasterCards. Please call with your card number or complete the registration form and send it back with your deposit or payment. If you have internet access, we encourage you to register and pay online, as there are more payment options available. Full payment with registration saves $$$.
A discount of $30 applies to 5 day adult workshop fees if entire registration balance is paid in full by Monday, June 2.

Lodging

The Wallowa Lake Camp is the site of the Fishtrap Gathering and the base camp for workshops. Dorm style accommodations are located in rustic cabins with bathroom facilities in separate but nearby buildings. You bring your own bedding and towels. Spaces are available for tents and campers. There are also a limited number of deluxe cabins (wooden yurts) available first come, first served. Each of these units sleeps four and has its own bathroom.

Fishtrap handles reservations for Wallowa Lake Camp only.

Meals

Meals are served cafeteria style at Wallowa Lake Camp, and feature fresh local produce. Please indicate vegetarian preference.

Cancellation Policy

Your deposit is non-refundable. Any other payments you have made will be refunded if we receive your cancellation by June 30. If it is necessary for Fishtrap to reschedule or cancel a workshop because of lack of enrollment or other unforeseen circumstances, you will be notified promptly and may choose to enroll in another program or receive a full refund.

Additional Information

Bring a seating cushion—the kind used at ball games—some of our seats are old fashioned and hard. NO PETS ARE ALLOWED AT WALLOWA LAKE CAMP; however they are at some of the other housing sites listed in the brochure.

Notice of Non-Discrimination: Fishtrap, Inc. prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or age within its organization and during the conduct of any of its programs.

Directions
Click here for a map and driving directions. (.pdf file)

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Camping and RV spaces are available at:
Wallowa Lake State Park
(238-7488 in Portland or 800-452-5687)

There are RV spaces at:
Scenic Meadows RV Park (541-432-9285)
Park at the River (541-432-8800)
Five Peaks in Joseph (888-432-4605)
Mountain View Motel & RV Park (866-262-9891)
Log House RV Park & Campground (541-426-4027)

For those who appreciate more
creature comforts:
Eagle Cap Chalets (541-432-4704)
Wallowa Lake Lodge (541-432-9821)
Flying Arrow Resort (541-432-2951)
Matterhorn Swiss Village (541-432-4071)
Wallowa Lake Resort (541-432-2391)
Heidi’s Cabins (541-432-0303)
Timberline Vacation Ranch (541-432-5052)
The Nutcracker (541-386-1163)
Trouthaven Resort (541-432-2221)

In Joseph:
Indian Lodge Motel (541-432-2651)
The Barn House (503-881-5008)
East Street Cottages (541-432-2651)

B & B’s include:
1901 Eagle’s Haven B & B (800-819-9544)
Alder Slope B & B (541-398-1688)
Arrowhead Ranch Cabins (541-426-4220)
Barking Mad Farm B & B (541-426-0360)
Belle Pepper’s B & B (866-432-0490)
Bronze Antler B & B (866-520-9769)
Chandler’s Inn (541-432-9765)
A Cowboy’s Riverfront Retreat (541-432-1775)
Cowgirl Heaven B & B (541-432-0229)
Green Valley Inn B & B (541-426-3747)
Little Ranch B & B (541-432-3706)
Whitetail Farm B & B (541-432-1630)

Private cabins:
Wallowa Lake Vacation rentals (541-426-2039)

For information on additional nearby lodging, call the Wallowa County Chamber at 800-585-4121, or visit their web site at www.wallowacountychamber.com. It includes links to lodging providers above and more.