July 19th-July 20th, 2025
Writers On The Prairie
A two-day, place-based writing retreat held during peak bloom in one of Pennsylvania’s rarest ecosystems. We’ll gather July 19–20 at Jennings Environmental Center in Slippery Rock, PA, surrounded by blazing stars, native grasses, and the magic of a 10,000-year-old prairie. This is a small, immersive conference designed for writers who want to slow down, pay attention, and write from the land
Location
Jennings Environmental Education Center
2951 Prospect Rd, Slippery Rock, PA 16057
Registration
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Presentations
Workshop 1
Writing About the Natural World: Sharing a Personal Celebration of Place
In this workshop, participants will review selected writing examples about aspects of the natural world, examining the writers’ objectives, motivations, and style. The workshop facilitator will discuss elements of creative nonfiction that inject nature writing with learning, emotional impact, and meaning. Finally, the facilitator will share his own personal tips and tenets for writing creative nonfiction about nature, with a special emphasis on the natural features of northern Appalachia.
Prairie Tour
Jennings Prairie Tour with DCNR Experts
Immerse yourself in the creative inspiration of Jennings Prairie during peak bloom. Guided by expert DCNR staff, this tour explores the unique features of this rare, glacial-era habitat and its ecological significance. Writers will find endless material in the endangered Blazing Star and the prairie’s dynamic landscapes, offering vivid imagery, metaphors, and themes to weave into their own work.
Workshop 2
Enrich Your Writing with Research
Does the idea of research make you want to hide under the covers? Do you cringe at the word research, imagining stacks of reference books or deep dives into endless websites? Research doesn’t have to be mundane or boring. There are so many ways to enhance your stories—non-fiction and fiction—with details and anecdotes you didn’t even realize you needed. Using concrete examples, Wilson will discuss how you can incorporate things like photos, maps, apps, conversations, interviews, and yes, Google, to enhance your fiction and non-fiction, and get you thinking about fresh ideas for your writing.
Workshop 3
Writing In Place
Join Tabassam for time in nature on the grounds of the Jennings Environmental Education Center where the sights and sounds of the prairie and the woods fuel inspiration for your writing. Plein air writing uses nature as a writing prompt and encourages writers to observe and react while being out of doors or out on the trail. Attendees will draft a poem or any other genre of writing as a reflective piece.
Workshop 4
Publishing
Pathways to publication
Session 1
How to Participate in Critique Groups
An introductory session setting ground rules and expectations, and then discussing principles of sound workshopping. Participants will learn how to get the most out of writing workshops—both as authors and as critics—and will see workshopping briefly modeled by mini-conference faculty.
Session 2
Immersive Critique Groups
Our craft sessions will culminate in a creative writing workshop, for which we will divide into three genre groups: nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. During your group’s critique session, you will have the opportunity to strategize with other writers in your genre by sharing impressions of their works, and garnering valuable feedback on your own. All participants are encouraged, if they wish, to bring one short piece to the mini-conference to share for workshopping (including something ‘fresh,’ written during the conference). We will work electronically, rather than with paper handouts.
Session 3
What to Do After a Critique Session
A short concluding session will offer participants guidance on the next steps. How can writers implement workshop findings? How do we know which impressions should guide our revisions, and which should not? Writers will learn about tactics for making sense of workshop impressions and forming a revision plan.
