John Daniel

John Daniel is the author of eight books, most recently The Far Corner: Northwestern Views on Land, Life, and Literature (Counterpoint, May 2009). He has been honored with two Oregon Book Awards, a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, a Pushcart Prize, the John Burroughs Nature Essay Award, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.  He has taught frequently at Fishtrap, the Sitka Symposium in Alaska, and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers in California’s Sierra Nevada.

[top]

Telling the Truth in the First Person:  A Yearlong Course in Memoir

The yearlong memoir workshop concludes this summer at Wallowa Lake, where it was born a year ago. The writers come with manuscripts fattened by their labors and the critiques and support of their fellow toilers in personal narrative. They have survived the experience of one year’s worth of the writing life engaged in a book‑length project, complete with a relentless monthly deadline and the erratic attentions of a testy, demanding, and entirely unreasonable editor. Their only joy was a blissful four January days in Portland during which they ate, shopped, and reveled well—that, and the fattened manuscripts.

Karen Fisher

Karen Fisher’s first novel, A Sudden Country (Random House) was cited by reviewers around the country as one of the best novels of 2005. It won numerous awards, including the Washington State Book Award and the Mountains and Plains Bookseller’s Award, and was named finalist for the PEN/Faulkner. She lives on Lopez Island with three children and a herd of horses. She is at work on a second novel, a screenplay, and a memoir.

Spirit and Matter in Historical Fiction

Sorry, this workshop is full, but you may register for the wait list.

For those in progress on or considering historical fiction, this workshop offers discussion and exercises.
 
Spirit, in the first half:  As we explore what our stories are about and why we feel compelled to write them, we’ll think more about their underlying themes and shapes. We’ll talk about love and doubt, resistance, transformation and new meaning.

In the second half, Matter:  Even stories about those long gone are best discovered through life in the vivid and chaotic present. We’ll talk about research, and how our own lives strengthen our fictional vision, guide imagination, and lend us clarity, credibility, and courage.

Charles Goodrich

Charles Goodrich’s latest chapbook, In the Chesnim Country, includes writings from his 2009 Werner Writer’s Residency at Billy Meadows. He is the author of Insects of South Corvallis and The Practice of Home, and co‑editor of In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens. After a long career as a professional gardener, he now serves as Program Director for the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word at Oregon State University.  A new collection of prose poems, Going to Seed: Dispatches from the Garden, is due out in April. His website is www.charlesgoodrich.com.

Travelling in Place:  The Outpost Workshop at Billy Meadows

Does a place belong to us, or do we belong to a place? Or do we, perhaps, co‑belong, co‑habit, with our places? For the Outpost workshop, we will make a pact with place, and let ourselves for a few days be owned by Billy Meadows. Roaming the woods, roads, and meadows, we’ll discover what makes this flowery enclave in the forest so alive. In our daily writing, we’ll look for vital correspondences between nature and ourselves. We’ll write a lot, and discover things we didn’t know we knew. Poets, prose writers, and genre‑benders are equally welcome.

Billy Meadows is an historic US Forest Service facility built by the CCC. Situated in a pine grove between the Zumwalt Prairie and Joseph Canyon, it is about 40 miles north of Wallowa Lake. Participants will be driven to Billy Meadows on Sunday afternoon, and will return to Wallowa Lake on Thursday. The workshop will conclude on Friday. Please visit www.fishtrap.org/outpost.shtml for more details.

Ehud Havazelet

Ehud Havazelet has lived in Oregon for 20 years, teaching first at OSU, then U of O.  He’s the author of three books, two of which, Like Never Before (1988) and Bearing the Body (2007) were  named New York Times Notable Books and won the Oregon Book Award. His recent work has appeared in New England Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, and the New York Times. He’s never gone fishing in his life, a situation he hopes to address at Fishtrap this summer.

Use It:  A Fiction Workshop

Sorry, this workshop is full, but you may register for the wait list.

“Chekhov makes everything work‑‑the air, the light, the cold, the dirt.” This is Flannery O’Connor on the great Russian short story writer and dramatist. While we all have a sense of the components of fiction, of scene, it’s not as easy to put them to work, to “use“ them. How, as one example, can setting be more than just backdrop? By reading stories that have figured some of these questions out and beginning  stories of our own, we will look at how various elements of scene—setting, detail, dialogue—can  be put to their best use.

Holly Hughes

Holly Hughes is the author of Boxing the Compass, which won the Floating Bridge Press chapbook contest in 2007, and editor of Beyond Forgetting: Poems and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease. Her poems have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies, most recently The Poet’s Guide to Birds, Working the Woods, Working the Sea, and Come Together: Imagine Peace. She has spent the last thirty summers working in Alaska as a boat captain and naturalist.  During the winter, she teaches writing at Edmonds Community College, where she co‑directs the Convergence Writers Series and the Sustainability Initiative.

Poetry as Practice, Poetry as Witness

Sorry, this workshop is full, but you may register for the wait list.

Jane Hirshfield writes that poetry is an act of attentiveness, of learning to see clearly, to be in the world with the full range of our feelings and perceptions. Paying attention moves us more deeply into our own lives and into the world, so that writing poetry becomes both a form of contemplative practice and of witness. We’ll look at poems that reveal this attentiveness, then write our own, applying principles of mindfulness from the Buddhist tradition as taught by Thich Nhat Hanh. We’ll focus on careful seeing and effective use of concrete details and metaphor, and will explore poetry’s role as witness.

Jack Loeffler

Jack Loeffler is an aural historian, radio producer, and writer. His focus includes restoration and preservation of habitat, the relationships of indigenous cultures to homeland, and the role of cognitive diversity in sundering monoculture. Loeffler has produced many radio series, including   Moving Waters – The Colorado River and the West; and The Lore of the Land.  His  books include Headed Upstream: Interviews with Iconoclasts and Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey. His current radio series/book project is entitled Thinking Like a Watershed. He has won multiple awards in New Mexico, and was honored in 2009 as a Santa Fe Living Treasure.

[top]

Three Short Aural History Presentations

“Interviews with Environmental Thinkers” will present spoken points of view of several well-known authors and thinkers who are recognized as contributors to the modern environmental movement, including Gary Snyder, Alvin Josephy, Garrett Hardin, Edward Abbey, Dave Foreman, John Nichols, William deBuys, Stewart Udall, David Brower  and others.

“Native American Points of View” will consider the relationship of indigenous cultures to their respective habitats, and will explore the dichotomy between the traditional Native American view of landscapes as sacred, and a global culture that has secularized and commoditized habitat. Voices from Navajo, Río Grande Puebloan, Hopi, Tohono O’odham, and other cultures will be presented.

Amy Minato

Amy Minato is author of Siesta Lane (creative nonfiction) and the poetry collection The Wider Lens, and received a  2003 Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship. Amy teaches writing through Literary Arts and Wordstock, and at Breitenbush, Sitka Center, Opal Creek, and other venues. She and her family migrate between Portland and the Wallowa Mountains where they lived for five years while Amy was Education Coordinator at Fishtrap.

Write Your Heart Out: A Memoir Workshop

Sorry, this workshop is full, but you may register for the wait list.

Your first love. The day you nearly died. A stranger’s smile that haunts you. This workshop is a journey into dazzling, puzzling memories. We’ll practice skills in imagery and metaphor to ground epiphanies, then discover patterns in our experiences that lead to story and an understanding of ourselves. We’ll visit a variety of memoirs for inspiration and ideas on style. All writing will be sifted through the encouraging sieve of supportive group critique. New and experienced writers welcome. Bring courage (at least a little), humility and a sense of humor.

Kirsten Rian

Kirsten Rian’s poetry has appeared in international literary journals and anthologies, and was recently nominated for inclusion in the Best New Poets anthology. She leads workshops internationally, including locations like Sierra Leone and Finland, using poetry as a tool for literacy, healing, and storytelling within the refugee/immigrant communities. She co‑authored the anthology Walking Bridges Using Poetry as a Compass.  Her anthology of Sierra Leonean poetry, Kalashnikov in the Sun, from Pika Press, was released in 2010. She is poetry editor of Writersdojo.org. Also an independent curator and writer, she has coordinated more than 375 exhibitions, and 65 books and catalogues.

Seeing: Finding:  A Workshop for Children 8-12 years old

Young authors turn their words into creative poetry and prose by exploring and writing about the world uncovered by looking, as well as by imagining. Days will be filled finding the unusual in the usual, and recognizing the poems and stories that present everywhere, as well as those invented. Emphasis will be placed on engaging all five senses to discover and describe. Activities may include hiking near Wallowa Lake and other daily adventures to prompt writing, finding.

[top]

Beth Russell

Beth Russell holds a Master of the Arts in Teaching from Oregon State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Pacific University in Forest Grove.   Her work has been published in Hedgerows, the Neighborhood Naturalist, Cloudbank Magazine and the Oregon Literary Review.  In 2009, Ms. Russell received a Presidential Scholars Distinguished Teaching Award. Currently, she teaches at Crescent Valley High School in Corvallis, Oregon, and is an English Language Instructor at Oregon State University.

Go Light: A Workshop for Teens 13-17 years old

What future do young people imagine for themselves? What does it mean to “stay together/learn the flowers/go light?”  In this multi‑genre workshop, writers ages 13‑17 will experience writing as an act of personal and cultural cartography. We will read, write, and hike daily, mapping the world we encounter, exploring the world we envision, and sharing what we learn along the way. Participants will be asked to question the distinction between Matter and Spirit. Everyone should wear practical shoes.

Cosy Sheridan

Cosy Sheridan has been called “one of the era’s finest and most thoughtful singer/songwriters.” She appeared on the national folk scene in 1992, winning songwriting contests at the Kerrville Folk Festival and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Her wryly insightful songs have been showcased everywhere from Carnegie Hall to the Philadelphia Folk Festival. With seven CDs to her credit, she co‑founded the Moab Folk Camp and has taught songwriting, performance, and guitar classes for 15 years at workshops like the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, the Swannanoa Gathering, and Summersongs. She wrote the one‑woman‑show The Pomegranate Seed – An Exploration of Appetite, Body‑Image and Myth in Modern Culture.

The Matter of Craft, the Spirit of Inspiration:  A Songwriting Workshop

Jane Vandenburgh

Jane is the author of two critically acclaimed novels: Failure to Zigzag and The Physics of Sunset, as well as the recent memoir A Pocket History of Sex in the 20th Century, just out in paperback. She has taught literature and writing at U.C. Davis, Georgetown, and the George Washington University, and is the Distinguished Writer in Residence at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California, for the spring semester of 2010. Her handbook on the craft of writing the longer narrative, Architecture of the Novel, will be published in June 2010. She has been working with writers whose stories ask to be told in the longer forms for more than a decade.

[top]

The Architecture of the Novel:  A Yearlong Course in the Novel

This yearlong course in the book‑length narrative concentrates on the special problems that arise in writing in the longer forms and on specific techniques necessary to getting a draft on paper. Beginning at Summer Fishtrap 2010 and concluding the following year, the course offers individualized support in face‑to‑face meetings, as well as monthly telephone conferences to discuss student deliveries of from 25 to 30 pages, which are carefully marked and returned. There will be one mid-term face-to-face meeting in January 2011. For details please click here.

Brian Doyle

Brian Doyle edits Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon – the best university magazine in America, according to Newsweek, and “the best spiritual magazine in the country,” according to author Annie Dillard.

Doyle is the author of nine books, including The Wet Engine, about the “muddles & musics of the heart,” and Thirsty for the Joy: Australian & American Voices, a collection of “proems.” Doyle’s essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and other periodicals. A novel, Mink River, will be published by OSU Press in October 2010. He has been awarded two Pushcart prizes and a 2008 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder is a poet, author, scholar, cultural critic, and Professor Emeritus of the University of California at Davis. Born in 1930, he lived in the Bay Area in the early 1950s, associating with Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and others who were part of the remarkable flowering of west coast poetry during the fifties. In 1956 he moved to Japan, studied Zen Buddhism and East Asian culture, and traveled through India and Nepal with Allen Ginsberg and Joanne Kyger.
 
In 1969 he returned to California. He divides his time between environmental and cultural issues with a focus on the Sierra Nevada ecosystem, and teaching with a focus on creative writing, ethnopoetics, and bioregional praxis. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his many other awards, Turtle Island won the Pulitzer prize for poetry in 1975, and his selected poems No Nature was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1992. He has two sons and two stepdaughters.Dian Million is Wood River Band, Tanana Athabascan. As a Northwest poet Million co-founded the Northwest Native American writers  group with Elizabeth Woody, Gloria Bird, Ed Edmo and Vince Wannassay in 1988.  She was active in the Portland Urban Indian Community for many years.  In 1992 she entered Western Washington University in Bellingham and graduated in 1995 with a self-designed interdisciplinary B.A. “Sovereignty.”   She was accepted into the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Graduate Group in 1996. Dian was a Fulbright scholar in 1999-2000 at the University of British Columbia and a Charles A. Eastman Dissertation Fellow at Dartmouth in 2001. Million received her Ph. D from Berkeley in 2004.

Dian Million

Dian Million was the first Barbara Christian Distinguished Alumni Lecturer for the Center for Race and Gender, University of California at Berkeley on April 28, 2005.  She has published a variety of articles, essays, and poetry since 1981. A representative example would include: Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cahiers de la femme; Social Justice; Reinventing the Enemy’s Language; “Predator”, ee wdoowata’a ag’e: Did They Rob You, Exhibit essay, University of Alaska at Fairbanks, Alaska; The Journal of Experiential Education; Calapooya Collage; Beloved of the Sky: Essays and Photographs on Clearcutting; Dancing on the Rim of the World: An Anthology of Contemporary Northwest Native American Writing; Mr. Cogito; Bearing Witness Sobreviviendo: An Anthology of Writing and Art by Native American/Latina Women; and Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. She is a mother and grandmother, part of a family that extends from Alaska to southern Oregon.

Jack Shoemaker

Jack Shoemaker, over the course of forty years, has owned or managed a number of important literary bookshops, and established several small fine presses.

In the 1970s, Jack served on the Literature Panel of the National Endowment of the Arts. In 1979, he co‑founded and served as editor-in-chief at North Point Press, whose books and authors won many awards, including MacArthur Fellowships, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and others. In 1994, Jack helped found Counterpoint Press, which now consists of three imprints, and brings together the backlist titles of several founding authors, including Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder, MFK Fisher, Evan Connell, Robert Aitken and others.

Robert Michael Pyle

Robert Michael Pyle writes essay, poetry, and fiction from an old Swedish homestead on a tributary of the Columbia in southwest Washington. Bob’s fourteen books have won the John Burroughs Medal, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and other awards. The latest, Mariposa Road: The First Butterfly Big Year, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt this fall. A collection of poems, two others of essays, and a novel are in progress; of the latter, he hopes the tenth draft will be the charm. A former Kittredge Distinguished Writer at the University  of Montana, Pyle comes to Fishtrap for the third time this summer as the Werner Writer in Residence.

Fees & Payment

We want attendance at Fishtrap to be determined by desire, not limited by means. We try to keep our costs as low as possible, and some scholarships are available. Registration opens at 9 am on April 1, 2010. A $100 non-refundable deposit reserves your spot. Final payment is due June 15. A $30 discount is available to those who pay in full by May 15. We do accept VISA and MasterCard. We encourage you to register and pay online.

Click here for the printable registration form for 2010. THIS IS FOR REFERENCE ONLY. INFORMATION AND FEES FOR SUMMER FISHTRAP 2011 WILL BE POSTED IN SPRING OF 2011.

Refund and Cancellation Policy

Your deposit is non-refundable. Other than the deposit, you will receive a 100% refund if you cancel by June 1, a 50% refund if you cancel by June 20, and no refund if you cancel after June 20. If it is necessary for Fishtrap to cancel a workshop, you will be notified promptly and may choose to enroll in another workshop or receive a full refund, including the deposit.

Lodging

Summer Fishtrap is based at Wallowa Lake Camp and Retreat Center. You can choose from three levels of lodging at the camp. Wooden yurts can fit one to three people, and have their own bathroom; sheets, blankets, pillows, and towels are supplied. Rustic bunkhouses have bare mattresses, with bathroom facilities in nearby buildings; you should bring your own sleeping bag, pillow, or other bedding. There are also RV and tent spaces; campers use the same bathroom facilities as bunkhouse occupants.

You may also choose to stay in lodging other than that offered by the camp. For information on other lodging, see the list at right or contact the Wallowa County Chamber of Commerce at 800-585-4121 or www.wallowacountychamber.com.

Meals

Meals are served cafeteria style at Wallowa Lake Camp, and feature fresh local produce. Please indicate on the registration form if you prefer vegetarian or vegan fare. Responsible consumption of alcohol is permitted only in cabins or other accommodations. No alcohol in Bailey Lodge.

Additional Information

You may wish to bring a seating cushion – like people use at ball games – as some of our seats are old fashioned and hard. No pets are allowed at Wallowa Lake Camp; however, pets are allowed at some other lodging sites at Wallowa Lake.

Notice of Non-Discrimination

Directions

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

[top]

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)
Northend Crossing (888-897-8020)

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