Well, it’s happened again. We had a great Terroir Creative Writing Festival and now we are sad it’s over.

You don’t have to feel this way!

You can keep that spirit of literary community and writerly exchange going all year round!

How, you ask?

Here are some ideas:

1. Join the Terroir board. We are a small group of volunteers who meet once a month September through January and then once ever two weeks from February until the festival in April. By joining us, you’ll get to help decide what writers we bring to Terroir and you’ll be tapped into the area’s literary community. We need you! Just reply to this email and we’ll contact you when the Terroir season starts up again.
2. Start an event. Want to host a reading event or open mic in your town? We can help you get there. If you have an idea for something literary you’d like to do in public, let us know. We are happy to share events on our FB and email lists when appropriate for our audience.
3. Tell us how you are doing. Let us know how Terroir is impacting your work! It’s great that we get to chat, but in order for our rural writing community to stay active and alive, we need to share the benefits of events like these.
4. Share your ideas. Want a particular regional writer to come to Terroir? Tell us! We have our favorites, but we are always open to suggestions.
5. Alert us about books. Do you have any books, self-published or traditionally published, that have been impacted by Terroir? Let us know! We’d like to put together a page of all the books that have emerged in the area with help from our little writing festival.
6. Support the writing community. Buy local authors’ books, attend literary events, make friends with our librarian, know every time that you are a part of this community.
7. Buy local. Whenever possible shop at Third Street Books to support our local economy. Bookselling is a socially conscious endeavor.

Thanks for making Terroir 2018 one for the books!

Curious about the self-publishing process? Maybe you’re overwhelmed by the number of paths to publication out there.

Authors and publishers with experience in self-publishing will be available for conversations in room #108, just past the elevator on the first floor. Please drop by to pick up business cards, ask questions, and learn more about options and opportunities.

 Ellen Summerfield has self-published four books of poetry and is pleased to share her experiences: using InDesign for formatting; working with an illustrator and a graphic designer; hiring and editor; and, for her most recent volume (Unruly, 2017), learning to use CreateSpace, which is the print-on-demand service offered by Amazon.

 Karen Berkey Huntsberger is the author of Waiting for Peace­: The Journals & Correspondence of a World War II Medic and I’ll Be Seeing You: Letters Home From a Navy Girl, both self-published and funded by Kickstarter campaigns. Karen has spoken extensively on her first book with the goal of promoting peace.  

Stephen Long was a dock worker, truck driver, inventor, and entrepreneur.  He fulfilled the dream of becoming an author when a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation led to his debut self-published novel There’s a Somebody. Stephen has since completed a follow-up novel All Hat, and is working on a third novel.

Patricia Marshall, owner of Luminare Press (a self-publishing service), enjoys sharing her knowledge, enthusiasm, and love of publishing and bookmaking with authors across the country. Patricia has a journalism degree from University of Oregon, and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College in Baltimore.

Gail Watson designs, prints and binds softcover books in her Newberg studio. She has been working with local authors for over 10 years designing the pages and covers of their books and making them easily readable and interesting visually. She will bring examples of her work and is looking forward to answering questions.

 Stop by, ask questions, and see the possibilities for your next project from these enterprising and creative professionals!

Don’t wait another minute! Today is the last day to register online for Terroir 2018, and to mail in your paper registration. Please have your registration post-marked by today. Click on 2018 Registration above!

Missed it? You can still come to the festival on April 14, 2018, but be there at 8:30 a.m. to be sure you get in!

One of the best parts of attending Terroir is the chance to learn across genres. Don’t identify as a playwright? You can still take away a lot of new approaches and get inspired by our resident dramatist this year, Lolly Ward.

Lolly Ward’s plays include Mate (The Actors’ Gang; California Institute of Technology), 72 Objects (semifinalist, O’Neill NPC), Black Press in the White House (Smith and Kraus, 105 Five-Minute Plays), and The Ethel Party (Silk Road Review). She co-founded LineStorm Playwrights and lives with her family and two chickens in Portland.

WORKSHOP: Discover your Play: 21 Questions to Ignite your Ideas
Put fresh eyes on a draft or writing concept with techniques that progress your theme toward your goal. A discussion of Aristotle’s 6 dramatic elements lays the groundwork for diving into your own piece. Answer 21 questions that will illuminate your story.

Are you ready for Terroir? Registration is now open, click on “2018 Registration” above.

Creative nonfiction takes real life and upends it through the power of perspective. It seeks to apply literary techniques to telling real stories or harnessing real truths through writing. Never static, never just one approach, it is a catch-all term that appears in any context where a writer is taking the stuff of life and finding a new way to capture it through the written word.

We are lucky to have three creative nonfiction experts at the festival this year, who will share stories from their work and, in the case of Barbara Drake, who will be speaking about Ursula Le Guin, others’ work as well.

Get ready for a deep dive into the process of creativity with these speakers!

Barbara Drake, Linfield College Professor Emeritus, lives with her husband on a small farm in Yamhill County, a landscape that inspired her OSU Press essay collections, Peace at Heart and Morning Light. Drake’s most recent poetry book is Driving One Hundred, from Windfall Press.  Her college textbook Writing Poetry has been in print since 1983.

TALK: What We Can Learn from Ursula Le Guin
Ursula Le Guin helped launch the Terroir Writing Festival nearly ten years ago. She was a prophetic voice in the Oregon literary community, and her example, encouragements, and exhortations continue to speak to us through her written words. Join Barbara Drake in exploring what we can learn from Ursula Le Guin.

Lisa Ohlen Harris is the author of the Middle East memoir, Through the Veil and of The Fifth Season: A Daughter-in-Law’s Memoir of Caregiving. She is a thesis advisor for the online MA in English and Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University and an online instructor for Creative Nonfiction, working out of Newberg.

WORKSHOP: The Artifact as Axis
In our conversations and thought life we naturally remember the past, think about the future, and live in the present. But how can the nonfiction writer move around in time without disorienting the reader? Let’s see how a location or artifact can become a concrete axis point that allows timelines to layer and intersect in surprising and delightful ways. Yes, in nonfiction!

Marjorie Sandor is the author of four books of short fiction and personal essays, and the editor of the anthology, The Uncanny Reader: Stories from the Shadows (St. Martins 2015). Her awards include a National Jewish Book Award in fiction, and an Oregon Book Award in literary nonfiction. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Oregon State University.

WORKSHOP: Haunted Borders: Exploring the Uncanny through Creative Writing
Playful, productive, and slightly disturbing: the uncanny blurs the line between the real and the imagined, the familiar and the unknown. We’ll get acquainted with the concept and generate some new writing. Our exploration will begin in memories of the domestic interiors of childhood and adolescence. Fiction writers, essayists, and poets all welcome.

Terroir registration is open! Click on “Registration 2018” above to join us!

There is no one path to published book or printed project. Indeed, these days, anyone who wants to see their written work out there in a world can find a way to get it in the hands of an audience.

How to navigate this path, given the abundance of options?

We have two speakers this year who will give talks about specific paths you might consider taking with your next project. Both have great experience in marketing personal work and are known in the Oregon writing community for their creativity and innovative approaches to  getting books in the hands of readers.

Join them at Terroir for an inspiring way of looking at the work of publishing!

Emily Grosvenor is the editor of Oregon Home magazine and an essayist and feature writer based in McMinnville, Oregon. Her work has been published in The Atlantic, Good Housekeeping, Sunset, Marie Claire, and Salon.com. Emily is Terroir’s publicity director.

WORKSHOP: Writing in Real Time: How to Grow an Audience Before Your Project Sees the Light of Day
What if you could use public comments to shape a writing project as it is created? This workshop will look at several best practice examples of writers who have used feedback from the crowd to shape their books – while building an audience for that work in the process.

Laura Stanfill is the publisher of Forest Avenue Press, a novelist, and the founder of the Main Street Writers Movement. She serves on the PubWest board of directors and her creative work is represented by Laurie Fox of the Linda Chester Literary Agency.

WORKSHOP: From Manuscript to Shelf: The Magic of Small Press Publishing
Small presses often take a hands-on approach, especially when it comes to working with their authors and launching innovative marketing efforts. Laura Stanfill, publisher of Forest Avenue Press, will share how a book moves from the acquisitions phase onto bookstore shelves with an emphasis on building community, supporting other authors, and recruiting allies along the way.

Have you registered for Terroir yet? It’s happening April 14, 2018 in McMinnville! Registration details are in the task bar at the top of this page. Secure your spot today!

For the first time ever, the festival will host a food writer, Heather Arndt Anderson, who will offer an introduction to the art and fun of writing about what we eat, cook, and celebrate together.

Culinary writing can be as beautiful and witty as any literature. The esteemed writer, who has been blogging at Voodoo & Sauce since 2006, will examine successful applications of common literary devices to culinary writing, exploring the works of cookbook authors M.F.K. Fisher, Helen Evans Brown, and more.

Heather Arndt Anderson is a Portland-based food writer and culinary historian. She’s the author of four books on culinary history and has been quoted by the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Atlantic. Her fourth book, Berries: A Global History, comes out in April 2018.

Have you signed up for Terroir? We have two registration options: Links on the task bar above!

The world lost a picant, vital, and fantastic voice when Oregon writer Ursula Le Guin died on January 22, 2018.

We at Terroir have a special fondness for Le Guin and her works. After all, she has the distinction of being the festival’s first-ever keynote speaker when we began just nine years ago.

To celebrate the memory of Le Guin’s works and contribution to letters, festival founder and poet Barbara Drake will be holding a session on what we can learn from Ursula Le Guin.

Barbara Drake, Linfield College Professor Emeritus, lives with her husband on a small farm in Yamhill County, a landscape that inspired her OSU Press essay collections, Peace at Heart and Morning Light. Drake’s most recent poetry book is Driving One Hundred, from Windfall Press.  Her college textbook Writing Poetry has been in print since 1983.

Terroir is happening Saturday, April 14, 2018. Don’t miss out! Mark your calendar today.

Hooray! You can register! Simply click on the links below and you’ll be able to choose between online and mail-in registration.

Mail-in registration

Online registration

We’ll see you April 14, 2018 at the Yamhill Campus of Chemeketa Community College for this year’s festival!

Poetry allows us to see the world with new eyes. These poets, our guests at Terroir 2018, will help you look at your poems with a fresh perspective.

José Angel Araguz is a CantoMundo fellow and author of seven chapbooks as well as the collections Everything We Think We Hear, Small Fires, and Until We Are Level Again. His writing has appeared in Hunger Mountain and Prairie Schooner. He runs The Friday Influence and teaches at Linfield College.

WORKSHOP: Creating the Moon: Poetic Authority and Hybrid Forms
Through a series of exercises and readings of poetry and short prose, this workshop focuses on discussing and identifying ways we can discover what a piece of writing wants us to do through expansive reading and writing. Forms to be discussed include haibun, pillow books (zuihitsu), prose poems, and haiku.

Henry Hughes is the author of four collections of poetry, including the Oregon Book Award-winning Men Holding Eggs and the fishing memoir, Back Seat with Fish. An active curator of angling literature, Hughes edited two Everyman’s Library anthologies—The Art of Angling: Poems about Fishing and Fishing Stories. He teaches at Western Oregon University.

WORKSHOP: Writing Above the Crowd
In an age when it seems like there are as many poetry journals as poets, a sea of self- and industry-published books, and thousands of writing workshops, conferences, retreats, and programs, how do writers cultivate and keep faith in their own original work? Does this “crowd” of writers affect the way you write? Do you think your voice matters? Why does it matter?  

Sam Roxas-Chua Poet Joseph Stroud says, Every now and then a unique, distinctive voice will appear on the literary scene, as if from out of nowhere. Sam is a poet and visual artist from Eugene. He’s the author of Fawn Language, Saying Your Name Three Times Underwater, and Echolalia In Script—A Collection of Asemic Writing.

WORKSHOP: Illuminating the Invisible Poem Using Visual Art and Asemic Writing
Learn skills to deeply listen to a poem using visual art and asemic writing. Asemic writing is a unique and open form of script that can awaken and strengthen the relationship with your work. You will be guided in writing exercises with a companioning and contemplative approach.

Registration is coming soon! Stay tuned! In the meantime, you can follow us on Facebook.