Writing About Place is a collaborative community series featuring four writing workshops and two guided hikes focused on observing, experiencing, and writing about the landscapes around us. This series is presented in partnership by the Charlestown Land Trust, Hopkinton Land Trust, Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association, Cross Mills Library, and Earthinform Studio.

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Do you want to observe the place you live more fully? Do you want to find words for your connection to the land? Do you have family stories shaped by this landscape that you’d  like to write down and share? These workshops explore the value of careful observation and listening, and the importance of writing about the places where we live. Deepening our relationship with the land through writing can also strengthen our understanding of why conservation and stewardship matter to our communities. The events are free and writers of all experience levels are welcome. Participants are  asked to preregister individually for each event.

All workshops will be at the Cross Mills Library, except the last workshop, which will be held at the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association Headquarters and presented in collaboration with Charlestown Land Trust, Hopkinton Land Trust, Wood-Pawcatuck  Watershed Association, and Earthinform Studio. Guided hikes to take place at Canonchet Brook Preserve and Mill Pond Preserve.

May 7th: Introduction and Readings by Wanda Hopkins, Grace Farell, and Miles Hardingwood

May 14th: Workshop with Wanda Hopkins

May 16th: Guided Hike with Hopkinton Land Trust (10am, Rain Date May 17th)

May 21st: Workshop with Grace Farell

May 23rd: Guided Hike with Charlestown Land Trust (10am, Rain Day May 24th)

May 28th: Workshop with Miles Hardingwood ( Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association Headquarters)

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About the Writers:

About Wanda Hopkins: Wanda Hopkins is a citizen of the Narragansett Indian Tribal Nation. She has served in Tribal government and has ministered at the Narragansett Indian Church for over twenty-five years. Ms. Hopkins serves as a Native American Community Advisor to the University of Rhode Island and the Tomaquag Museum. She is a respected culture bearer and writer who has shared her knowledge and perspective with churches, schools, and civic organizations throughout Rhode Island, across the United States, and in Canada. Ms. Hopkins holds a Master of Arts in English from the University of Rhode Island. Her scholarly interests focus on regional Indigenous literature and its influence on national and local Indigenous movements, policies, and legislative agendas. Her future research includes documenting the lives of her Narragansett relatives interred at the historic Babcock Cemetery in Hopkinton, Rhode Island.

About Grace Farrell: Grace Farrell, R. C. Reade Professor emerita of Butler University in Indianapolis, is the author and editor of five books as well as numerous essays on Poe, Melville, Lillie Devereux Blake, I. B. Singer, Beckett, Anne Tyler, and 19th and 20th c. American literature and culture. For thirty-five years, she taught literary texts and their cultural contexts. A weaver as well as a writer, Grace co-founded the Carolina Fiber and Fiction Center in Rhode Island. While conventional advice has long told us to write what we know, Grace encourages writers to write towards what they do not know, what they can, perhaps, never fully know. Home again in Rhode Island, within sight and sound of the ocean, she uses writing to embrace the beauty and the inscrutable mystery of the universe that surrounds us.

About Miles Hardingwood: Miles Justice Hardingwood is a poet and creative from Brooklyn, NY. He is a 2023 National Student Poet and a 2022 NYC Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador. His poetry has received a Scholastic National Gold Medal and an American Voices Medal. He has performed at venues such as The White House, The Schomburg Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and Vice President Kamala Harris’s Black History Month Celebration. He attended the Kenyon Young Writers Workshop and the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, and is now a student at Brown University, where he is pursuing a concentration in Literary Arts.