What does it mean to slow down and pay attention to the natural world? What lives there with us? In this creative writing workshop, we will closely observe nature with a particular focus on trees.

You will come away from this workshop with new nature-writing techniques to use in your writing practice and a sheaf of new writing.

We'll be forest-bathing, practicing sustained attention, and you will be also invited to contribute to Ariel Gordon’s public poetry project TreeTalk: Scarborough Bluffs, where she is writing poems to a Black Locust at Fool’s Paradise and inviting guests to add their poems/confessions/ideas.

About the Instructor

Ariel Gordon (she/her) is a Winnipeg/Treaty 1 territory-based writer, editor, and enthusiast. She is the ringleader of Writes of Spring, a National Poetry Month project with the Winnipeg International Writers Festival that appears in the Winnipeg Free Press. Gordon’s most recent books are the essay collection Treed: Walking in Canada’s Urban Forests (Wolsak & Wynn, 2019) and the first book in the public poetry project TreeTalk (At Bay Press, 2020). Her fifth book, Siteseeing: writing nature & climate change across the prairies, written in collaboration with Saskatchewan poet Brenda Schmidt, will be published by At Bay Press in fall 2023. Gordon is the March 2023 Artist-in-Residence at the Doris McCarthy Artist in Residence Centre.

About the Doris McCarthy Artist in Residence Centre at Fool’s Paradise

Fool’s Paradise was the home and studio of Canadian landscape artist, writer and educator Doris McCarthy (1910-2010). The site overlooks Lake Ontario along Toronto’s Scarborough Bluffs. McCarthy first visited the property during a sketching trip in November 1939. She was immediately inspired by the landscape views and picturesque setting, and purchased the property for $1,250. In 1940, she had a small cottage constructed on the site by local builder Forest Telfer. McCarthy’s mother, Mary Jane, saw the purchase as extravagant, referring to it as “that fool’s paradise of yours.” The name stuck in McCarthy’s mind and the property soon became known as Fool’s Paradise. Originally, the cottage was a summer retreat, but it became her permanent home in 1946. Following her death in 2010, the Ontario Heritage Trust established the Doris McCarthy Artist in Residence Centre on the property.