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. Please read individual course descriptions for more specifics as each course is different. While individual workshops vary, students can likely expect to spend a few hours a week reading, writing, and commenting on work in and outside of class

We also offer an additional hour-long private group Zoom Q&A session with Orion's editor-in-chief Tajja Isen. This will occur outside your normal class meeting time at a time and date TBD, for no additional charge. It will be a time to peek behind the curtain and ask any general questions you might have about pitching, writing, publishing, and Orion.  

The course: Finding Joy in the Ordinary, or The God of Small Things

French philosopher Simone Weil once said that attention is a form of prayer. In our world of constant distraction and the 24-hour news cycle, how can we pay attention to the small details that shape our world, that give us a firm sense of place and allow us to come one step closer to the many hidden worlds of our natural environment? In this multi-genre writing class, we will think about the role of sensory details in helping shape the world of the page. We will ground our writing practice by focusing on the ordinary and the quotidian, and delve into the myriad ways in which utilizing the five senses can defamiliarize us from preconceived ideas. 

Using the works of Elizabeth Bishop, Boris Pasternak, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, we’ll ask: how do details in poems, stories, and essays or memoirs bring to light marginalized voices? How do they affect how we resonate with animals, trees, and the landscape at large? This class is a welcoming, safe space that relies on mutual respect and peer feedback. It’s a great opportunity to hone the skills of your chosen genre or to engage with other forms of writing.  

 Duration: This online course meets from May 5 - June 23 over eight consecutive Tuesdays from 12 - 2 pm EST (9-11 am PST).     

Application window: March 15 - 31

The Instructor: A native of Odesa, Ukraine, Natalya Sukhonos is multilingual, speaking Russian, English, as well as Ukrainian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard. Beyond Odesa, she has lived in New York City, New Haven, Madrid, Boston, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, and Istanbul. Natalya is a poet, scholar, and teacher deeply committed to the power of language to uplift, inspire, and defamiliarize us from the ordinary. She is equally comfortable teaching literature and creative writing to children as well as to college students and older adults. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2015 and 2020 and the Best New Poets Anthology of 2015, Natalya was a finalist for the June 2025 Reading Period of the Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series. She’s the author of Parachute, A Stranger Home, and most recently Sunlight Trapped in Stone.  She lives with her two daughters and her husband, writer Ian Ross Singleton, in beautiful Upstate New York.

Tuition

This Zoom course is available for $600. 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 1500 words of your best prose or up to five pages of 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.

Questions? Contact workshops@orionmagazine.org or check out our Help Center or FAQs.

2026 Orion Environmental Writers’ Workshop  

June 14-19, at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York 

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, artists, 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 sessions dedicated to intensive craft practice, faculty readings and lectures, student readings, and panels on publishing.

Workshops 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.

HOW TO APPLY 

We are accepting applications for the 2026 workshop from February 1st – May 1st, 2026.

 Workshops will be offered in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. This year's faculty includes Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams (nonfiction), Erica Berry (nonfiction), Michael Kleber-Diggs (nonfiction/poetry), Isle McElroy (fiction/nonfiction), Maria Pinto (nonfiction), Roger Reeves (poetry), and Nick Triolo (nonfiction). 

Please submit a cover letter and sample of your work through Submittable. For prose, send up to a 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 of weeks of applying.

We recommend applying early! Register by March 15 for early bird tuition rate. 

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 numbers. Please reach out if you’d like to discuss, and/or include a statement of need in your cover letter.

**NOTE: The deadline for scholarship consideration is March 1st.**

More questions related to Orion workshops? Check out our FAQs or contact us. 

LOGISTICS Travel: The Omega Institute is located in Rhinebeck, New York, with access to major airports and public transportation.

Tuition and Board: Tuition is $1300 ($1150 early bird rate if you register by March 15th). Additional room and board fees vary based on your choice of accommodation (tents, wall tents, dorms, private cabins) and range from $575 – 1850.

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, meditation, and 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. The campus also offers a Wellness Center with massage and other services for an additional cost.

Meals: The Omega Institute offers local, organic, sustainable, nutrient-dense, artisanal, and whole-food meals, and is able to accommodate a variety of tastes, dietary needs, and food allergies.

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. Please read individual course descriptions for more specifics as each course is different. While individual workshops vary, students can likely expect to spend a few hours a week reading, writing, and commenting on work in and outside of class

We also offer an additional hour-long private group Zoom Q&A session with Orion's editor-in-chief Tajja Isen. This will occur outside your normal class meeting time at a time and date TBD, for no additional charge. It will be a time to peek behind the curtain and ask any general questions you might have about pitching, writing, publishing, and Orion.  

The Course: In This Poem Something Grows

This workshop title is, of course, aspirational. More likely, something grows, and then it fails. Or something thrives for a given set of conditions. In this generative workshop we’ll hone our observation skills while also risking accountability for our role as an observer in the human and natural world. How might we better pay attention to the ways we impose ourselves upon our environment (and the ways the world imposes on us)? In what ways might our observations shape our writing? What poems might develop out of a sustained practice of paying attention? To ground our initial observations, participants will be asked to grow a plant from seed (or sustain a plant cutting) until it roots.

Readings will include poems by Tarfia Faizullah, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Donika Kelly, Reginald Dwane Betts and many more. Each week, we’ll discuss sample poems and respond through in-class writing exercises that will help draft a poem for the following week. The last hour of every class will be used to share recently drafted poems so that every student will have the opportunity to receive feedback.

Duration: This online course meets from over six consecutive Tuesdays from 6-9 pm ET (3-6 PT) running from May 5 to June 9.

Application window:  Apply by March 31 , 2026

Instructor: Asa Drake is a Filipina/white poet and teaching artist in Central Florida. She is the author of Maybe the Body (Tin House, 2026) and Beauty Talk (Noemi Press 2026), winner of the 2024 Noemi Press Book Award. Her chapbook One Way to Listen was selected by Taneum Bambrick as the winner of Gold Line Press’s 2021 Poetry Chapbook Competition. A National Poetry Series finalist, she is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, the Florida Book Awards, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Storyknife, Sundress Publications, Tin House, Idyllwild Arts and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her poems can be found on The Slowdown Podcast, The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review Daily, and Poetry Daily. She has taught craft intensives with Tin House, Hugo House, Sundress Publications, and The Loft Literary Center, and currently serves as an associate editor with the Beloit Poetry Journal.

Tuition

This Zoom course is available for $600. 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 1500 words of your best prose or up to five pages of 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.

Questions? Contact workshops@orionmagazine.org or check out our Help Center or FAQs.