You may have heard that nature has the capacity to hold our sorrow. A walk through a forest is ripe with imagery of the natural cycle of life. The changing seasons shows us that nothing lasts forever. None of this makes writing about grief any less difficult. How can we writers use nature’s imagery and metaphors to write about the complexities of grief and loss? How do we avoid sending our readers running for the hills because our writing is deemed is too sad or too sentimental? In this class, we’ll take on these questions and practice using nature in our stories about loss and mourning.
Vanessa Mártir is a big-hearted, 1980s Brooklyn-raised bocona learning the heartbeat of silence in the countryside of upstate NY; an oil-and-water combination of imposter syndrome, ambition, procrastination, certainty, insecurity and drive. Vanessa writes essays, memoir and novels, is a wanna be poet & playwright, and the creator of the Writing Our Lives Workshop; the Writing the Mother Wound Movement, and most recently the Write Your Abortion Story class. Vanessa has been widely published including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Longreads, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, Aster(ix) Journal, and the New York Times' Bestselling anthology Not That Bad, edited by Roxane Gay, among others. She has partnered with Tin House and The Rumpus to publish WOL alumni, and with Longreads and NYU's Latinx Project to publish Mother Wound essays. She has also served as guest editor of Aster(ix) and The James Franco Review. When she's not writing or teaching, you can find Vanessa in her garden or hiking in an old growth forest. Find out more about her relentless belief in our stories at vanessamartir.com.
Vanessa is new to The Porch. Welcome!
