Mountain Words Festival 2026

Join short fiction writer and novelist Claire Boyles in a workshop to stimulate your creative process.

Beyond the Forest and the Trees: Layers of Landscape and Place

The author Robert Macfarlane writes: “The best of the recent [nature] writing is ethically alert, theoretically literate and wary of the seductions and corruptions of the pastoral. It is sensitive to the dark histories of landscapes and to the structures of ownership and capital that organise – though do not wholly produce – our relations with the natural world.”  To capture this complexity of place, writers must describe the immediate sensory experience of the story (the trees) and the way those physical details operate on character and story tension (the forest). They must also portray, to some degree, the historical and political contexts surrounding both (the atmosphere). In exploring these layers of landscape and place, writers will learn techniques for widening the scope of their work.

In this two-part seminar, geared for both novelists and memoirists, writing coaches Dan Manzanares and Doug Kurtz will use spontaneous ideas from workshop attendees to create a story any agent would drool to read. We'll activate the Story Map, a relational storytelling model, to show the group in real time how a story works and how easy it is to go from first concept to full draft.

In this two-part seminar, geared for both novelists and memoirists, writing coaches Dan Manzanares and Doug Kurtz will use spontaneous ideas from workshop attendees to create a story any agent would drool to read. We'll activate the Story Map, a relational storytelling model, to show the group in real time how a story works and how easy it is to go from first concept to full draft.

Modern readers want to immerse themselves in your story, to feel what the characters see and feel. This class will extend the common exhortation of “show, don’t tell” to the idea of “inside/outside.” Learn how to bring your reader into the world and emotions of the characters. Come prepared to write.

Debut novelists Nina McConigley (How to Commit a Post Colonial Murder) and Claire Boyles (Appraisals) discuss the road to publication.