GARY FERGUSON has written for a variety of publications, from Vanity Fair to the Los Angeles Times, and is the author of sixteen books on nature and science. His 2004 title Hawks Rest: A Season in the Remote Heart of Yellowstone (National Geographic), was the first nonfiction work in history to win both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for Nonfiction. Ferguson served as the William Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Montana, and is currently on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop Master of Fine Arts Program at Pacific Lutheran University.

Where the Land Leads: Writing About the Natural World
THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL - Waiting list available.
Literary critic Frank Stewart once described nature writers as people who “bring together the scientific and the poetic,” creating something new, larger than the sum of the parts. This nonfiction essay workshop offers students the chance to cultivate fresh, compelling narratives about the power of landscape. Specifically, we’ll use a mix of exercises, storytelling, readings, and lectures to address three important aspects of nature writing: a) developing a compelling theme; b) honing essential craft skills, including setting, transition, tone, and pacing; and c) improving the flow and energy of our work through an elegant, ancient storytelling blueprint.

JOANNE MULCAHY teaches at The Northwest Writing Institute, Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, where she is Co-Director of the Documentary Studies Certificate Program. Her essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The Stories that Shape Us: Contemporary Women Write about the West and These United States. Her awards include the New Letters nonfiction prize, and fellowships from Oregon Literary Arts, The British Council, the Alaska Humanities Forum, and the Oregon Council for the Humanities. She is the author of Birth and Rebirth on an Alaskan Island and Remedios: The Healing Life of Eva Castellanoz.

Cultural Passages: Writing about the Lives and Landscapes of Others

When we explore other cultures, whether overseas or in the heart of our own communities, we are changed by the experience. We strive to recapture the details of that transformation when we write travel stories, cultural journalism, or portraits of the people we’ve met, observed... or loved. In this workshop, we’ll generate writing based on such excursions afar and close to home. We’ll write from photographs and memory, exploring literary form, style, voice, and the ethics of writing about other people and cultures.

HENRY HUGHES grew up on Long Island, New York. After completing a writing degree at Purdue in 1990, he spent five years working in Japan and China. He has lived in Oregon since 2002. His first collection, Men Holding Eggs, received the 2004 Oregon Book Award. His second book, Moist Meridian, is a finalist for the 2011 Oregon Book Award. He is the editor of the anthology, The Art of Angling: Poems about Fishing (Knopf 2011) and his commentary on new poetry appears regularly in Harvard Review.

Move: A Poetry Workshop
Creatures and people migrate to survive and flourish. Humans seek passage toward personal discovery and enlightenment. There are times, my friends, when you’ve got to move. The goal of this workshop is to move your poetry into a new place, to explore a fresh style or subject, to speak in a different voice. This doesn’t mean, however, that we discard what we love and do well. It does mean that we are willing to take risks, leave stuff behind, cross borders, live with strangers, even get a little crazy. Just as a journeying soul carries a small bag, you may bring a notebook of things you’ve been working on, but this workshop is about writing the new poems that will change your life.   

ROSANNE PARRY is the author of Heart of a Shepherd (2009) and Second Fiddle (2011), which was featured in the Spring 2011 Kid’s Indy Next List. Heart of a Shepherd was honored as a Washington Post Best Kids’ Book of the Year, a Kirkus Reviews Best Children’s Book of the Year, and a Horn Book Fanfare Best Book of the Year. It received the Oregon Spirit Book award and has been nominated for readers’ choice awards in nine states. Rosanne is a part-time teacher, a full-time mother and a some-time musician. She lives with her family in Portland.

Coming of Age and Rites of Passage: Writing for Young Readers
Coming of age is the universal passage. Writing for young people, at its best, taps into the power of that journey. This workshop will help writers put themselves in the mind and heart of a middle grade or young adult character. We will craft a strong beginning and follow it through with a well-developed plot, memorable characters and a vivid setting.
Participants should bring a story in progress and a willingness to play with words. Please read Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Parry and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie before the first meeting.

DEBRA MAGPIE EARLING teaches at The University of Montana. Her novel Perma Red has won numerous awards including the American Book Award, the Spur Award, and the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association Award. She has been the reciepient of an NEA and a Guggenheim Fellowship.  Her latest book, The Lost Journals of Sacajewea, was produced by the master printer Peter Koch.

A Different Passage, a Strange Migration
Have you been attracted to writing about a fictional world populated by women in attics, vampires in basements, or werewolves in the Wallowas? Are you drawn to write a scary story, a weird tale, a ghost, UFO, Bigfoot, or monster story or a story that might break with conventional ideas of realism? Writers are coming out of their literary closets, pen in hand, and flickering candles held high to light again the dark stories of legend and myth.  In this workshop we will be looking at elements of realism that make a tale convincing. We’ll examine literary techniques to hook a more sophisticated reader.  We’ll find the passages to unknown worlds.

ROBERT MICHAEL PYLE writes essay, poetry, and fiction from an old Swedish homestead on a tributary of the Lower Columbia.  Bob’s fifteen books, winners of the John Burroughs Medal, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and other awards, include: Wintergreen; The Thunder Tree; Where Bigfoot Walks; Chasing Monarchs; Sky Time in Gray's River; Mariposa Road; and The Butterflies of Cascadia. Recently the Kittredge Distinguished Writer at the University of Montana, Pyle taught environmental writing in Tajikistan for the Aga Khan Trust for the Humanities, and was Werner Writer-in-Residence at Fishtrap in 2010.

Migrations Within and Without: The Outpost Workshop at Billy Meadows
THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL - Waiting list available.
Everyone loves a good road trip, and journeys have inspired writers from Homer to Heat Moon and beyond.  In Europe, migrants are called "birds of passage."  Here, perched on this dissected and forested plateau, we are the "people of passage"—stepping out onto this flowered land to take a road-trip in a vole-track, explore a continent in a meadow, find the story in natural history.  Writing in any and all forms, we'll examine and share journeys of the foot and the heart.  And then we'll move on again, the better able to know, and tell, where we're going.

LUCI TAPAHONSO
is a Diné (Navajo) poet and a Professor of American Indian Studies and English at the University of Arizona. She is originally from Shiprock, NM, where she grew up in a family of 11 children. Navajo was her first language but she learned English at home before starting school at the Navajo Methodist Mission in Farmington, NM. She is the author of three children's books and five books of poetry. Professor Tapahonso received the 2002 American Indian Leadership Award from the University of Kansas for her integral role in establishing the Indigenous Nations Studies Graduate Program there in 1998. Her book, Blue Horses Rush In, was awarded the Mountain and Plains Booksellers Association's 1998 Award for Poetry. She was also awarded "1999 Storyteller of the Year" by The Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers. She received the 2008 Arizona Book Award for Poetry for her most reacent collection, A Radiant Curve : Poems and Stories. Tapahonso was very honored to serve twice as Grand Marshal of the Northern Navajo Fair, in 1991 and 1999. 

Writing What We Know
The trajectory of our lives, our families, our communities and our world are miraculous, beautiful, frightening, and full of meaning.  Our details—our points of intersection and points of divergence—are worthy of exploration and investigation.  We will look at the personal journeys of poets who contemplate and are mindful of the world within them and around them. We will engage in writing exercises, activities and workshops that honor these principles and allow for space and opportunity to connect to our own personal stories and beyond. 

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Migrations of Speech: Putting Dialogue to Work

Migrations of people and animals often involve moving from a perilous place to one of relative safety. In both fiction and nonfiction, the most compelling dialogue follows a similar course when characters protect themselves by not saying what they mean. In this workshop we will move from the basics of dialogue—using natural speech patterns, advancing plot and eliminating explanatory adverbs—to explore to more specialized techniques that reveal emotional context and character motivation. We will delve into the layers of narrative subtext, chess-like manipulation in conversation, vulnerability concealed by outward humor or aggression, and more.

KIRSTEN RIAN’s work has appeared in numerous magazines, international literary journals, and anthologies. She teaches writing internationally and through regional organizations such as Portland State University, and has worked with students of all backgrounds. She is also a painter, musician and mother of two sweet kids. 

Landings: A Workshop for Youth 10 - 17 years old
How stories and poems find us and reveal where we are 
THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL - Waiting list available.

This workshop will explore how writing reflects what is discovered in the world at our back door, and beyond. Nationally recognized slam poet and spoken word artist Myrlin Hepworth will join us one day. Additional activities may include a daily group ‘zine, and exploring the Wallowa Lake area for migrating stories, selves, and ways of seeing. 

BETH RUSSELL holds a Master of the Arts in Teaching from Oregon State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University in Forest Grove. In 2009, Beth received a Presidential Scholars Distinguished Teaching Award. In 2010, Stanford University awarded her a J.E. Wallace Sterling Scholar's Award for Distinguished Teaching. Currently, she teaches at Crescent Valley High School in Corvallis, Oregon, and in the English Language Institute at Oregon State University.

MYRLIN JAMES GONZALES HEPWORTH has spent the last three years writing and performing poetry across the United States while attending college. He has competed on three National Poetry Slam Teams and performed and taught workshops alongside various esteemed authors. In 2009, Hepworth was selected as a Teaching Artist by the Arizona Commission on the Arts. In 2010, he became the first undergraduate to become a teaching artist for the Young Writers Program at Arizona State University. In addition to visiting nearly thirty high schools each year, Hepworth makes a living with his art by performing at universities, various youth centers, group homes, museums, and theaters. 

What is "Slam" anyway? This workshop will explore slam poetry vs. spoken word vs. poetry. The page vs. the stage.

2. Poetry as Performance (recommend taking #2 and #3 together)

Your chance to dive in, stand up, and start slamming. A workshop on effective reading techniques. The team concept will be introduced, so gather a few friends and make new ones

3. The Game of Slam (recommend taking #2 and #3 together)

Strategies for winning at slam, team strategies, poem choice, momentum, score creep. We'll form two or more teams and practice competing. Similar to a track meet.

KAREN FISHER's first novel, A Sudden Country 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 2006 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, and was named finalist for the PEN/Faulkner. She lives on Lopez Island with her three children and a herd of horses. She is at work on a second novel set in part in the Snake River country. Karen taught a popular one-week workshop in Historical Fiction at Summer Fishtrap 2010. At the request of her students, we have invited her to teach this longer form course.

Yesterday Is All That Counts: A Yearlong Course in Book-Length Historical Fiction

THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL
Who we are and what we can’t accept are the “resonant sources,” the vital forces that fuel what we must write, and when we feel the past reaching through us strongly we must seek expression in this form. This yearlong course in historical fiction concentrates on the special challenges of writing narrative fiction based on artifacts, old photographs, precious scraps of lore, obscure references, half-remembered arcana, field trips, scribbling in museums, hours in Special Collections, and so on. Beginning at Summer Fishtrap 2011 and concluding the following July, the course offers individualized support in face-to-face meetings, as well as monthly telephone conferences with the instructor. Students are expected to submit 25-30 pages per month for review and comment. The group will reconvene with Karen for four days in January 2012. For details, application guidelines, and deadlines, please visit www.fishtrap.org/yearlong.shtml.

JANE VANDENBURGH 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. Her handbook on the craft of writing the longer narrative, Architecture of the Novel, was published in June 2010. She has taught literature and writing at U.C. Davis, Georgetown, and the George Washington University, and was the Distinguished Writer in Residence at St. Mary=s College in Moraga, California, for the spring semester of 2010, and was recently named the Bessinger Fellow at teh Djerassi Residency Artists Program. She has been working with writers whose stories ask to be told in the longer forms for more than a decade.

The Architecture of the Novel:  A Yearlong Course in the Novel (not open for registration)
This yearlong course in the book‑length narrative has concentrated on the special problems that arise in writing in the longer forms and on specific techniques necessary to getting a draft on paper. The workshop concludes this summer at Wallowa Lake, where it was born a year ago. [Jane will be adding some more copy here to 100 words.]

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The Bookloft at Fishtrap

Mary Swanson’s “Bookloft at Fishtrap” will be open during the week. Faculty books, CDs, and DVDs will be available. Anyone who registers and has a book for sale should contact Mary at 541-426-3351 or bookloft@eoni.com to arrange for her to sell it at Fishtrap.

Fellowships & Scholarships

Each year Fishtrap selects from a pool of applicants up to five Fellows, who receive workshop registration, meals, and lodging for the Fishtrap week. The judge for 2011 was this former fellow Robert Stubblefield. Fishtrap also awards several scholarships every year. The Sally Bowerman Scholarship goes to a working woman; the Frank Conley and Bryn Lunde scholarships are for young people. Click here for full details on fellowships and scholarships.