Range Maps: A Writing Lab with J. Drew Lanham
An ornithologist thinks about how birds end up where they are—preferences for certain habitats (field, forest or wetland), foods (insects, flower, nectar or fruit), tolerances for extreme temperatures (snowy owls in Arctic subzero or roadrunners in desert heat) or even mate choices (we know that females often do the choosing). For most birds there's a multi-colored blob in some field guide that gives us an idea of how that particular bird lives its life: where it winters, breeds and how it makes it way in between.
Have you ever thought about your own personal range map? Where do you live? Where do you bird? Are there places you avoid or that present danger to your birder being? What expands your range of being? What restricts it?
Asking these questions and thinking about how we find comfort in this place or that—with whomever we love, in whatever identity we choose or chooses us—is crucial if we are to truly be our best selves. It's not just a question of watching birds, it's a matter of being who we are.*
Join ornithologist/writer J. Drew Lanham in this lab hosted by Writing the Wild, on Tuesday, May 28, 2024 (4-5:30pm PDT). This live, online event will include readings and writing prompts; we will write to feather fascination but with feeling as the guide. We won't leave the science behind, but will integrate conscience into the craft. New and experienced writers, bird-loving journalers, and all other curious humans are welcome.
Tuesday, May 28, 2024
4-5:30pm PDT
Cost: $50
Writing the Wild Cohort Member Cost: $30
Please bring:
Writing materials
Colored pencils
Printed copies of two hand-drawn maps (emailed ahead of time)
This is a live, participatory lab and it will not be recorded. Cancellations must be made 48 hours prior to the lab and will be charged a $10 cancellation fee. Partial scholarships may be available; contact us to apply.
*From the forthcoming book, "Range Maps: Birds, Blackness and Loving Nature Between the Two (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 202?).
J. Drew Lanham is the author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature, which received the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Reed Award and the Southern Book Prize, and was a finalist for the John Burroughs Medal. His most recent book is Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves. He is a birder, naturalist, and hunter-conservationist who has published essays and poetry in publications including Orion, Audubon, Flycatcher, and Wilderness, and in several anthologies, including The Colors of Nature, State of the Heart, Bartram’s Living Legacy, and Carolina Writers at Home. A 2022 MacArthur Fellow, Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology, and Master Teacher at Clemson University, he and his family live in upstate South Carolina, a soaring hawk’s downhill glide from the southern Appalachian escarpment that the Cherokee once called the Blue Wall.