2026 Early Fall Orion Poetry Workshop: The Gift of Attention with Erin Coughlin Hollowell
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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: From Lichen to Glacier – The Gift of Attention
When we write about landscapes we know well and inhabit, it is easy to stop truly seeing and fall into habits surrounding language, image, and form. When this happens, poets need to find ways to reinvigorate their attention. In this generative poetry class, we’ll look at ways to reposition ourselves in the landscape, refresh our language, employ form to revive our vision, and supercharge our imagery past the surface attributes.
In this eight-week course we will discuss ways to refocus our attention as poets by examining anchor texts by various contemporary poets and then trying out the techniques in our own work with some generative exercises. Poets should bring a good idea of which landscapes are often featured in their work, and they will leave with five or six new poems that re-envision those places with refreshed attention.
Duration: This online course meets across eight consecutive Sundays from 2-4 pm ET (11-1 pm PT), beginning on September 6th and concluding on October 25th.
The Instructor: Erin Coughlin Hollowell is a poet who lives at the end of the road in Alaska. Her poetry collections Pause, Traveler (2013)and Every Atom (2018) were published by Boreal Books. Her collection Corvus and Crater was published by Salmon Poetry in 2023. She is most recently published in Shenandoah Literary Magazines, Ploughshares, and Poetry Northwest. She is the executive director of Storyknife, a women writer’s residency center.
Application deadline: Apply by July 15th.
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.