VISUAL SUBMISSIONS

SHADES OF GREEN

We’re continuing our reader-sourced Murmuration section next summer, and we need your help. Each season we put out a call for photography in response to a specific theme, then pick fifteen of our favorites to run as a group of 2 x 3 images in a grid format at the front (second page) of the magazine.

During our submission window from April 15-30, 2024, we’re looking for shades and images of the color green: food, plants, textiles, wildlife, unexpected, and unnatural sources of green. Submit 1-3 images, and if we select one, you’ll get a complimentary year-long subscription to Orion. Don’t worry about resolution or specs yet, but know that horizontally oriented photographs work best.

By submitting these images to Orion for inclusion in the Murmuration section of the magazine you also grant us permission for non-exclusive potential future use of said images with proper attribution, if selected.

Questions? Write to submissions@orionmagazine.org

Orion magazine hosts regular Online Environmental Writers’ Workshops in poetry and nonfiction. This unique opportunity lets you improve your writing skills and build community from home. Connect with us for six to eight sessions with an experienced instructor and writer. Learn more about environmental writing, and renew, illuminate, and deepen your relationship with nature and place.

Conducted over Zoom (or similar platform) and limited to twelve participants, the workshops will feature a combination of generative exercises, craft talks, readings, special guest appearances, and workshopping of student manuscripts. Individual workshops vary, but students can likely expect to spend several hours a week reading, writing, and commenting on work in and outside of class.

The Course: Poetry and Spirals

This poetry course will fixate on poets, theorists, and writers who engage with slime as material and concept: the slipping genres, the gooey self. In addition to keeping a weekly dream diary (which we will call slime time), we will read and write work that interacts with subjects such as plant and animal life (snail love), borders and boundaries, identity fluidity, and more! 

The Instructor: Taneum Bambrick (she/they) is the author ofIntimacies, Received(Copper Canyon Press2022), andVantage(American Poetry Review/Honickman First Book Award 2019). Their work can be found in the New Yorker, The Nation, American Poetry Review, and their essay “Sturgeon” was selected for the 2017 BOOTH Nonfiction Prize. She lives in Los Angeles and is a Dornsife Fellow at the University of Southern California where she studies poetry and nonfiction. She is currently working on a memoir.

The duration:  This course meets over six consecutive Tuesdays from 5-8 pm ET, from July 2 -through August 6. 

Tuition: Each Zoom workshop is available for $500. Payment within five days of acceptance will guarantee your spot. Cancelations up until a week before the start of the course will result in a full refund. After that, refunds will be conditional on our ability to fill your spot before the course begins.

How to Apply: These workshops may be competitive. Please send a cover letter and up to six of your best poems. Sample writing can be published or unpublished, and might, but probably will not be used in class. Applicants will be notified whether they have been admitted within a week of the application deadline.  

Apply: April 1-20.

Questions? Contact workshops@orionmagazine.org or check out our FAQ page.

Orion magazine hosts regular Online Environmental Writers’ Workshops in poetry and nonfiction. This unique opportunity lets you improve your writing skills and build community from home. Connect with us for six to eight sessions with an experienced instructor and writer. Learn more about environmental writing, and renew, illuminate, and deepen your relationship with nature and place.

Conducted over Zoom (or similar platform) and limited to twelve participants, the workshops will feature a combination of generative exercises, craft talks, readings, special guest appearances, and workshopping of student manuscripts. Individual workshops vary, but students can likely expect to spend several hours a week reading, writing, and commenting on work in and outside of class.

The Course: The Storytelling Animal: Nature, Language, and Self 

This will be a gathering of people who want to build trust: in one another, in the process of writing, and in the greater-than-human world. Together we will read and discuss ecopoems/ecopoetry, write poems (with optional prompts), and dedicate attention to one another’s work through writing workshop. Our workshop will be attentive—oriented toward quality and depth of discussion—in order to build the kind of trust and community that make for honesty and risk-taking in poems. Each participant will have the opportunity to sit down with the instructor one-on-one in the second half of the course to discuss their poems and/or topics of the class. Throughout the course, we will frame and question the roles of language in relationship to the greater-than-human world, and will attempt to reach through the poems to that world.

The Instructor: Leah Naomi Green is the author of The More Extravagant Feast (Graywolf Press), selected by Li-Young Lee for the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and named “one of the best books of 2020” by The Boston Globe. She received the 2021 Lucille Clifton Legacy Award for compassion, courage, truth-telling, and commitment to justice, as well as an Academy of American Poets 2021 Climate Action Poetry Prize. Her work, which has appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, Poem-a-Day, VQR, The Southern Review, and Orion, among other publications, has been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and supported by fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. Green teaches environmental studies and English at Washington and Lee University. She lives in Rockbridge County, Virginia where she and her family homestead and grow much of their food for the year.

The duration: This course meets over six Fridays from 1-4 pm ET,  June 21-August 2 (skipping the week of July 12).  

Tuition: Each Zoom workshop is available for $500. Payment within five days of acceptance will guarantee your spot. Cancelations up until a week before the start of the course will result in a full refund. After that, refunds will be conditional on our ability to fill your spot before the course begins.

How to Apply: These workshops may be competitive. Please send a cover letter and up to six of your best poems. Sample writing can be published or unpublished, and might, but probably will not be used in class. Applicants will be notified whether they have been admitted within a week of the application deadline.  

Apply: April 1-20.

Questions? Contact workshops@orionmagazine.org or check out our FAQ page.

Orion Environmental Writers’ Workshop June 16 -21, 2024

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP 

Join a community of writers, improve your craft, and reimagine how you think about nature. Guided by award-winning instructors, the Orion Environmental Writers’ Workshop provides an intimate space to connect with writers and editors, spark creativity, and renew, illuminate, and deepen your relationship with place. This week-long workshop is cosponsored by the Omega Center for Sustainable Living. 

Whether your passion is nonfiction, fiction, or poetry, the Orion Environmental Writers’ Workshop is a creative laboratory for anyone seeking to reflect their environments through their work. The course features breakout generative workshop sessions dedicated to intensive craft practice, faculty readings and lectures, student readings, and panels on publishing. 

Workshop seats will be limited in size so that each participant receives individualized attention, feedback, and focused time with faculty members and Orion editors to discuss whatever is on their minds. Throughout the week, literary agents and editors will stop by for panels and conversations to answer questions and offer advice on bringing out your work in the publishing world.

FACULTY 

2024 faculty includes Erica Berry (nonfiction), Alison Hawthorne Deming (nonfiction), Alexandra Kleeman (fiction/nonfiction), Kathryn Miles (nonfiction), Katrina Vandenberg (poetry/hybrid), and Felicia Zamora (poetry).  

Look here for more information about our faculty. 

HOW TO APPLY

Applications Accepted: February 1 – May 1, 2024

*Apply early and officially register by March 15 to receive the early bird tuition rate. 

Workshops will be offered in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Please submit a cover letter and sample of your work through Submittable. For prose, send a 1,000-1,500 word writing sample, for poetry, send up to six pages of poetry. Acceptances will be made on a rolling basis and applicants will be notified whether they have been admitted within a few weeks of applying. 

Note that a variety of housing options at different price points are available at the Omega Institute. Those who apply earlier will be able to choose their housing sooner. Some housing options may sell out faster than others. 

Some partial financial aid is available but in limited quantities. Please reach out if you’d like to discuss.  *The deadline to apply for aid is March 1.  

LOGISTICS 

Travel: The Omega Institute is easily accessible. It is conveniently located in Rhinebeck, New York, with easy access to major airports and public transportation. 

Tuition and Board: Tuition is $1200 ($1100 early bird rate if you register by March 15th). Additional room and board fees vary based on your choice of accommodation and range from $495-1500.  When successful applicants call Omega, they will be given various housing options for their 5-day stay, including private cabins, dorm rooms, and tent space. Fees are all-inclusive and include three meals a day, optional daily classes in yoga or tai chi, and access to amenities like tennis courts, a basketball court, walking trails, boating on the lake, the Ram Dass Library, the Sanctuary for meditation, and an Omega Art Bag with art supplies for drawing or painting.

Please write to workshops@orionmagazine.org with any questions or visit our FAQ page.