Imagination and Experience: Writing the Songs of Your Life 
Kelley Hunt
We all have a soul connection to the song that we alone can sing, write and express to others. Allowing that song to surface is exhilarating.  We will explore ways to identify what songs have moved, inspired and uplifted us to help us learn how to sing our very own. There will be opportunities throughout the week to share our songs with each other if we so choose.

                            
Taking Tender, Loving Care of Our Brave Voices 
Kelley Hunt
As Stephen Sondheim said, "If I cannot fly, let me sing." All voices are beautiful! Together, we will have fun singing and discover ways to maintain healthy ways of caring for our voices.  As weather permits, we will sing both in the main workshop building and various outdoor locations, including the beautiful amphitheater, and under the stars. (Note: No one will be asked to sing alone.)

Turning and Returning to the Source: Writing As Practice
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
Writing can serve us our whole life as a creative, emotional, and spiritual practice.  In turn, our whole life serves our writing, giving us infinite material for stories, poems, essays, plays, and songs.  In this session, we'll investigate how to turn our writing toward the source of what, within us, wants to be written, spoken or sung. Using innovative writing prompts that draw our lived experience to the surface, we'll explore, what Mary Oliver calls in her poem, "Honey, "a taste composed of everything lost,/ in which everything lost is found." We'll also look at how the practice of writing from our life can illuminate and invigorate our life.  As Joy Harjo tells us, "Remember the dance that language is, that life is."

Prairie, Wind, Water & Body: Writing From the Earth
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
William Stafford, poet of the Kansas prairie, writes: "The earth says have a place, be what that place/ requires; hear the sound the birds imply; and see as deep as ridges go behind/ each other." In this eco-poetics session, we'll create poems, stories and songs in concert with the wild all around us. Meeting on the pavilion by the lake (weather permitting), we'll discuss and explore how to let the rhythms of wind and water, "the sound the birds imply"a nd what we see come through our writing. We'll also explore writing from the earth most local to us: our own bodies. And we'll look at the connections between place, memory, and perception.

Art in the Afternoons: During the afternoons, Laura Ramberg will be available for set times to help you create art. Laura will have art stations set up to help you create masks, collages or other art; please sign up for mask-mold-making sessions with Laura to create a mask you can then decorate during the week.  Laura Ramberg is a long-time artist and writer who specializes in sculpture and earth-based arts, and facilitates workshops for at-risk teens and other populations.

Free time: Each afternoon features a stretch of open space and time for you to write, sing, create (art supplies will be available), walk, boat, do yoga, nap, or take field trips by foot or car (maps to interesting sites will be available). We will also have a massage therapist on site for some of the afternoons if you wish to sign up for a massage (additional charge paid directly to massage therapist).

Consultations with Kelley or Caryn: Caryn and Kelley will hold office hours each afternoon if you wish to sign up for a 20-minute consultation on your writing, singing, songwriting or creativity in general.