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 Your Form When Writing About Food

Formal constraints aren’t just arbitrary rules that give writing shape and rhythm. They’re restrictions that can set our writing free. When we’re struggling to begin a work of food-focused nonfiction, how do we find the right form? How can forms associated with food, like the recipe or the menu, be used as invitations to experiment? How might formal constraints guide us toward the fullest expression of our art? In this workshop, we’ll take a close look at three forms: the recipe, the flash essay, and the braided essay. We’ll read essays from writers who play with form and food in interesting ways, like Samantha Irby, Rebecca Solnit, Joe Wilkins, and Maya Jewell Zeller. We’ll consider how we might invent forms of our own. And we’ll write. 

Classes will be discussion-based and generative, with time to share work. Students will leave class with one complete draft of an essay and multiple starts for new pieces.

Duration: This online course meets from May 13 through June 17 over six consecutive Wednesdays from 5-8 EST pm (2-5 pm PST).

Application deadline: April 20, 2026

The Instructor:  Kate Lebo’s first collection of nonfiction, The Book of Difficult Fruit (FSG 2021), won the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of the cookbook Pie School (Sasquatch Books 2014, 2023), the poetry chapbook Seven Prayers to Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Entre Rios Books 2018), and coeditor with Samuel Ligon of Pie & Whiskey: Writers Under the Influence of Butter & Booze (Sasquatch Books 2017). She writes a food column for The Inlander and is a regular contributor to Homecooked magazine. Other recent essays and poems have appeared in Orion, New England Review, SWING, and Cake Zine. Kate lives with her family in Spokane, Washington, where she is an apprentice cheesemaker to Lora Lea Misterly of Quillisascut Farm. 

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.