This week-long writing enrichment program in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom leverages the power of place to help students to explore their own identities and develop powerful skills as writers. Hosted at a beautiful wilderness camp on Job’s Pond in Westmore, VT, students will engage in a variety of experiences designed to galvanize and inform their writing: hiking, camping, swimming, canoeing, mountain-biking, community-building. As they experience the land and the culture that arises from the land, students will participate in classes and workshops and attend literary readings designed to grow their skills as writers. And students will write, write, write--learning and practicing a breadth of skills that will make them more confident and self-reflective writers. Students on this trip will:

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• Read texts by a diverse range of authors who challenge them to think critically and curiously about writing and about their place in the more-than-human world

• Embrace a process-based mentality rather than a product-based mentality

• Experiment with and reflect on different writing processes as they find one that works for them

• Hone their own voices as writers by incorporating into their writing various experiences and dimensions of their identities

• Pursue an idea from an initial draft into a more fully realized piece

• Share their writing with each other, both on the page and aloud

• Experience moments of joy, delight, curiosity, and wonder in the act of writing

• Cultivate a supportive community of writers that invites them to take intellectual risks

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​By the end of the week, students will emerge as far more competent and confident writers. Each student will produce one fully realized piece that they are excited to share with others. They will have thought deeply about both their approach to craft and their relationship to place--habits of mind that will travel with them back to campus and beyond.