Image
This generative writing workshop, “Eco-Writing,” begins with an exploration of a few short, classic examples of environmental literature. Particular attention will be paid to how eco-writers describe their surroundings, create metaphors, incorporate science and natural history, and establish personal connections with their subjects. The class will then venture outside to “gather the seeds” for their own eco-writing pieces. Students will return to the classroom to complete a series of writing prompts designed to help those seeds bloom into larger works.
About the Speaker:
Hastings Hensel is the author of the poetry collections Ballyhoo (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019) and Winter Inlet, which won the 2014-2015 Unicorn Press First Book Contest, as well as the chapbook Control Burn, winner of the 2011 Iron Horse Literary Review Single-Author Competition. He serves as Principal Lecturer in the English Department at Coastal Carolina University.
Originally from Columbia, South Carolina, Hastings graduated from Sewanee: The University of the South and earned his M.F.A. from Johns Hopkins University.
His writing has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, and he has received several honors, including the Tennessee Williams Fellowship at Sewanee, the South Carolina Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry, and the Hopkins Review Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. He has also been named Grand Strand Artist of the Month. His magazine articles frequently appear in South Carolina Living, and he is a Master Naturalist and the owner of the ecotour company River Reader Kayaking in Murrells Inlet.