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S C H E D U L E   O F   E V E N T S

5th Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness & the Creative Imagination
Ecotones: Ecologies in Tension
 

Iowa State University
Brunnier Art Museum & Memorial Union
Ames, IA
February 8 – 9, 2009

 

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8TH

• 1:00 p.m.  – 2:00 p.m.                                                            Brunnier Art Museum, Scheman Building

Writers Grow Here:  Flyway “Home Voices” Award
Writers in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment will read from their creative work featuring themes of environmental imagination.  The readers were selected from a competitive pool of submissions by the staff of Flyway, a journal of writing and environment in which the top winner’s work will also be published in 2009.

• 2:00 – 3:30 p.m.                                                                            Brunnier Art Museum, Scheman Building

Gallery Talk, Wasteland: Meditations on a Ravaged Landscape
            --David T. Hanson, Photographer

David T. Hanson will discuss photographic works from his monograph, Waste Land: Meditations on a Ravaged Landscape, several of which are featured in the Brunnier exhibition, Imaging a Shattered Earth: Contemporary Photography and the Environmental Debate.   Hanson’s photographs portray some of the hidden environmental hazards of the United States—chemical wastes, the exhausted land resulting from coal mining, and various other consequences of industrialization and militarization.

The Waste Land series is composed of triptychs, each work consisting of a geological survey map, an aerial photograph taken by Hanson, and a description of the site supplied by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These works expose the most polluted places in the United States, sites first corrupted by industrialization, then neglected by legislators.

--Sponsored by the Center for Excellence in the Arts & Humanities

• 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.                                                                            Iowa House, 405 Hayward Avenue

 MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment Reception

Join us for refreshments at the Iowa House to welcome our visiting writers and artists and celebrate the opening events of the 5th Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness and the Creative Imagination
 

• 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.                                                                                       Sun Room, Memorial Union
  

Who Owns the American West? A Reading and a Conversation with Author, William Kittredge
                        --Moderated by Benjamin Percy

In the long-ago land of my childhood we clearly understood the high desert country of southeastern Oregon as the actual world.  The rest of creation was distant as news on the radio.
                                                                –William Kittredge, from “Home”

William Kittredge’s relationship to the spare, often unforgiving Western landscape of his childhood is fraught with contradictions.  Having grown up on a cattle ranch in Oregon, he has an intimate connection to the vast landscape that was once vital to his family’s trade.  He has also witnessed, over many decades, the depletion of the West’s natural resources due to overuse.  A University of Montana Emeritus Regents Professor of English, William Kittredge is the author of numerous books, including Hole in the Sky: A Memoir; Owning it All: Essays; The Next Rodeo: New & Selected Essays, The Nature of Generosity, and Who Owns the West?  Kittredge is also the author of short story collections including We Are Not in This Together, and a novel, The Willow Field.

With Annick Smith, Kittredge co-edited The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology, which gathered together a wealth of literature inspired and shaped by the landscape of Montana ranging from Native American tales and myths to contemporary stories and poems.  He also edited the anthologies, Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome and the Portable Western Reader.  In this evening keynote, William Kittredge will read from his work and engage in a moderated conversation with the writer, Benjamin Percy, who is an assistant professor of English at Iowa State University.  A reception and book signing will follow.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9TH

• 9:00 – 10:00 a.m.                                                                                    Sun Room, Memorial Union

Hiddenscapes: Glaciers and their Impact on the Iowa Landscape --  An Arts & Science Focus
        --Kathleen Woida and Barbara Haas

Mundane in comparison to the spectacular scenery found elsewhere in the country, Iowa’s landscape belies a complex glacial terrain fashioned by dynamic events of the geologically recent past.  Beneath her subtle landforms rest Iowa’s hiddenscapes; beneath her ephemeral present contours lay the enduring mementos of the past. By altering the scale and focus of our perspective in space and time, we transform our understanding of and appreciation for this nuanced land.  Using multiple lenses of old and new technologies, visual imagery, and the creative imagination, NRCS state geologist Kathleen Woida and ISU creative writing professor Barbara Haas will provide a fresh look at Iowa’s glacial history, her landforms and ancient buried soils, and new discoveries both geological and personal.

• 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.                                                                        Sun Room, Memorial Union

Writing Across International Boundaries:  A Conversation and Poetry Reading
            with  Jennifer Kwon Dobbs and Heather Derr-Smith
                        --Moderated by David Zimmerman

What are the responsibilities of authors who travel internationally and write on global themes?  Is it possible for authors to see the world and represent it beyond the limitations of their own cultural blinders?  Join us in a conversation with two poets whose work strives to bear witness to international stories of environmental degradation and political upheaval, to honor that which is lost, to reclaim that which can be salvaged, and to create empathy and understanding across international boundaries.

• 1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.                                                                                Sun Room, Memorial Union

The Artist as Environmental Activist
        Panel:  David T. Hanson, Shannon Ramsey, Annick Smith, Clark Wolf
                --Moderated by Stephen Pett

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
            --W.H. Auden, “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”

The artist is trained to watch, listen, observe, and report, but what are the obligations of artists to act, agitate, and intervene on behalf of environmental causes that exist in the bio-regions in which they live and work?  On this panel, artists and environmentalists will discuss how they came to a point of understanding and reconciliation with issues of environment in their work.

 --Sponsored by the Center for Excellence in the Arts & Humanities

• 3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.                                                                                   Sun Room, Memorial Union

Of Men and Marshes: A Tribute to Ecologist, Paul Errington
        --James Pritchard, Matthew Sivils

In this session, we honor the life, work, and memory of the ecologist and ISU professor, Paul L. Errington, with two scholarly papers and short readings from Dr. Errington’s work by graduate students.

Paul L. Errington was internationally recognized for his work on the population phenomena of vertebrates, especially fur and game species, and made extensive studies in this field in North American and northern Europe.  He became a staff member at Iowa State University in 1932, the same year he received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin, and was a professor of Zoology at Iowa State at the time of his death in 1962.  

Dr. Errington was presented the American Wildlife Conference Aldo Leopold Medal in 1962 and was twice honored by the Wildlife Society for his outstanding wildlife publication.  Dr. Errington received research support in the form of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Swedish government.

A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Ornithologists Union, and a member of the American Society of Zoologists, Dr. Errington was the author of more than two hundred published technical and popular articles and the author of four books:  Of Predation and Life, Of Men and Marshes, Muskrats and Marsh management, and Muskrat Population.  Two books featuring Professor Errington’s work, published posthumously—The Red Gods Call and A Question of Values—were collected and edited by his wife, Carolyn Errington.

• 6:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.                                                                            Sun Room, Memorial Union

Dessert Reception, MFA Program in Creative Writing Environment

Please join us for a dessert reception to meet the visiting writers for the 5th Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness and the Creative Imagination, and to savor the sweetness of our MFA Program’s third year!

• 7:00 – 8:00 p.m.                                                                                        Sun Room, Memorial Union

A River Runs Through it, and Other Adventures: A Reading and a Conversation with  Author/Filmmaker, Annick Smith
                --Moderated by Debra Marquart

Each of us has memories we sing over and over again like a song in our inner ear.  If your place of memory and connection is the Big Blackfoot River you are blessed, as I am.  You will want to do what you can to save the river so your grandchildren can float its green waters and fish its native cutthroats and bull trout.  You will teach them to dive into deep pools, touch stones that go back to the beginnings of time.  The river is not dead yet.  Boys and girls should make love on its banks.
                                                    --Annick Smith, “The Rivers That Runs Through It”

“Here is a woman to admire and love,” Annie Dillard wrote of the work of Annick Smith.  In 1964, Annick Smith went to Montana with her husband, Dave, and their boys.  In a fertile valley where meadows tip downward toward the Big Blackfoot River, they found what they had dreamed of: 163 acres of ranch land with a view of creek, hills, and the Rattlesnake Mountains.  The Montana about which Annick Smith writes in her books, Homestead and In This We are Native, is the not-so-distant West of outlaws and pioneers, Indians and soldiers, range inspectors and cattle thieves.

Smith’s work honors the past but also foregrounds the present stories arising from her homeground, making a passionate argument for saving the wildernesses of Montana from clear-cutting by corporate logging.  The author and editor of several books, Smith was also the co-producer of A River Runs Through It as well as the producer of a feature-length film, Heartland.  She has made documentary films about the poet Richard Hugo and the environmentalist Doug Peacock.  In this evening keynote, Smith will read from her work and engage in a moderated conversation with the writer, Debra Marquart, who is a professor of English in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment.  A booksigning will follow.

SPONSORS

MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Committee on Lectures (funded by GSB), the Creative Writers’ Milieu (CWM), LAS Miller Lecture Fund, Center for Excellence in the Arts & Humanities, ISU Bioethics Program, Department of Ecology, Evolution & Organismal Biology, Environmental Studies, Department of Geological & Atmospheric Sciences, Department of English, and the Henry A. Wallace Endowed Chair for Sustainable Agriculture.

 

GENERAL INFORMATION

• All Events are Free & Open to the Public 

• No Registration Required

• For more information about the conference, contact Debra Marquart (marquart@iastate.edu)

• For Hotel Reservations:  Contact The Iowa House Bed & Breakfast (515-292-2474) or The Memorial Union Hotel  (800-433-3449)

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION -- PARTICIPANTS & KEYNOTES

Heather Derr-Smith received her undergraduate degree in Art History from the University of Virginia and her M.F.A. in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.  Derr-Smith’s first poetry collection, Each End of the World, featured poems about the Bosnian war in the 1990's. Her second collection,The Bride Minaret, journeys to the rough core of desire, creating and destroying binaries along the way. Familiar artifacts of domesticity become as volatile as land mines, and the streets of Damascus, Calcutta, and other faraway locales obliterate the American landscape. In this book, Derr-Smith’s poetry transcends time and place, illuminating the ties that bind man to woman, mother to child.

Jennifer Kwon Dobbs was born in Won Ju Si, South Korea. Her debut collection, Paper Pavilion, received the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and was published in 2007. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous journals including 5 AM,Blackbird, Cadences, Crazyhorse, Cimarron Review, Cream City Review, MiPOesias, Poetry NZ, Tulane Review, and  she has been anthologized in Echoes Upon Echoes and Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond.  Her work has been featured on radio and in film and translated into Greek, Korean, and Turkish.  Dobbs’ music collaboration with Steven Gates, Among Joshua Trees, won the New York Youth Symphony´s First Music Series Award and debuted at Carnegie Hall. She is also the librettist for Anemone, a chamber opera about Korean comfort women.  She holds a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California.  Currently she is an assistant professor of creative writing at St. Olaf College and lives in Minneapolis.

Barbara Haas' short stories have been published in journals such as Glimmer Train, The Antioch Review, Quarterly West, The Georgia Review, Epoch, American Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Western Humanities Review, The Cimarron Review and others. Her work has appeared multiple times in The Hudson Review, Virginia Quarterly Review and The North American Review. A recipient of a National Endowment Literature fellowship, Barbara Haas is the author of a short story collection, When California Was an Island.

David T. Hanson has produced works of art pertaining to the environmental impact of man around the nation. Born in Montana, he received a B.A. in literature from Stanford University, and a M.F.A. in photography from Rhode Island School of Design. From 1983 to 2000, Hanson taught at RISD in the department of Photography and Landscape Architecture. He has received the John Simon Memorial Foundation Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists awards.  He currently lives in Fairfield, Iowa.

William Kittredge taught at the University of Montana for 29 years, retiring as Regents Professor of English and Creative Writing in 1997. Kittredge’s books include a memoir, Hole in the Sky; the nonfiction books, Owning It All and Who Owns the West; Balancing Water:  Restoring the Klamath Basin, The Best Stories of William Kittredge; and The Willow Field, a novel published in 2006.  The Next Rodeo: New & Selected Essays was published by Graywolf Press in fall 2007.  Kittredge and Annick Smith edited The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology and were co-producers of A River Runs Through It. Kittredge received the Montana Governor’s Award for the Arts, was co-winner of the Montana Governor’s Award for Humanities and co-winner of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Charles Frankel Award for service to the humanities, awarded by President Clinton. In 2006 he was given the Chiles Award for Service to the Great Basin, and in 2007 the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Times. In 2008 he will receive a Lifetime Achievement award from the Western Literature Association.

Benjamin Percy was raised in the High Desert of Central Oregon.  Ben teaches fiction and nonfiction writing in the MFA program in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University. Percy is the author of a novel, The Wilding, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2009, and two books of short stories, Refresh, Refresh and The Language of Elk.  Percy’s fiction and nonfiction have been read on National Public Radio, performed at Symphony Space, and published in Esquire, Men's Journal, Paris Review, the Chicago Tribune, and Glimmer Train.  His honors include a Pushcart Prize, the Plimpton Prize, and inclusion in Best American Short Stories. In 2008, Percy received a Whiting Writers’ Award, a prestigious prize given to writers of exceptional promise and talent in early career.

Debra Marquart, professor of English, teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment at Iowa State University, as well as the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program at University of Southern Maine.  Marquart’s books include two poetry collections—Everything’s a Verb and From Sweetness—and a short story collection, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories. Marquart has been the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, the Shelby Foote Essay Award from the Faulkner Society, a Mid-American Review Nonfiction Prize, a John Guyon Nonfiction Award from Crab Orchard Review, and a 2008 NEA Literature Fellowship.  Her memoir, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere, was selected by the New York Times Book Review for an Editors’ Choice commendation and received Elle Magazine’s “Elle Lettres” award and the 2007 PEN USA Creative Nonfiction Award.  Marquart is currently at work on a novel, set in Greece, titled Among the Ruins.

James Pritchard holds joint appointments at Iowa State University between the Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management and the Department of Landscape Architecture.   His research interests include environmental history, science in the national parks, the history of animal ecology, the history of wildlife in North America, and the foundations of natural resource policy and management.  Pritchard is the author of three books:  Butterflies of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, A Green and Permanent Land, and Preserving Yellowstone’s Natural Conditions.

Stephen Pett is the author of two books: Pulpit of Bones, poetry; Sirens, a novel. His stories and poems have appeared in a number of journals. His stories have been listed on the Honor Roll in the Best American Short Stories and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The coordinator of the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment, Pett also serves as the managing editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment. He received his MA from Hollins College and his Ph.D. from the University of Utah.

Shannon Ramsey is the President, CEO and co-founder of Trees Forever, a national non-profit organization based in Marion, Iowa.  Trees Forever empowers people who want to take an active role in environmental stewardship. Since 1989, Trees Forever has worked with communities ravaged by floods and tornadoes by providing grants to replant trees.  They have also developed cutting-edge programs and innovative processes that have helped thousands in Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota plan for and complete thoughtful and effective tree planting projects that will prevent further erosion and flooding.

Matthew Wynn Sivils is an assistant professor in the Department of English.  Formerly a wildlife biologist, his areas of expertise are environmental literature and nineteenth-century American literature. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and the editor of two volumes of writings by the Muscogee poet, Alexander Posey: Song of the Oktahutche: Collected Poems (2008) and Chinnubbie and the Owl: Muscogee (Creek) Stories, Orations, and Oral Traditions (2005), both of which were published by University of Nebraska Press.  Sivils is currently at work on an edited collection of Alexander Posey’s life-writing, entitled Lost Creeks: Collected Journals. He is a textual editor for "The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper" and is at work on a scholarly edition of Cooper’s 1843 satirical novella, The Autobiography of a Pocket Handkerchief. Sivils is founding co-editor of the scholarly annual, Literature in the Early American Republic (LEAR).

Annick Smith is a writer, editor, and filmmaker who lives in Montana’s Blackfoot River valley.  Her books include the memoir, Homestead, as well as a collection of essays, In This We are Native; a natural and human history of the Oklahoma tallgrass prairies, Big Bluestem, Journey into the Tallgrass, written for The Nature Conservancy; and The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie.   Smith was the co-editor with William Kittredge of the Montana anthology, The Last Best Place, and her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Travel & Leisure, The New York Times, Audubon, OUTSIDE, Orion and other magazines and anthologies.  She was a founding member of the Sundance Film Institute, the executive producer of the feature film, Heartland, and a co-producer of Robert Redford’s production of A River Runs Through It.  Smith is currently finishing a travel-memoir-dog book, Crossing the Plains with Bruno, about traveling with her chocolate Labrador, Bruno.

Kathleen Woida is the State Geologist of Iowa with the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service in Des Moines.  Her article "Polygenesis of a Pleistocene Paleosol in Iowa" appeared in the Geological Society of America Bulletin.  She holds a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Iowa.

Clark Wolf is Director of Bioethics at Iowa State University, where he also serves as a member of the Department of Philosophy, and as a faculty member in the Graduate program on sustainable agriculture.  Before coming to Iowa State, he taught at the University of Georgia, the University of Colorado at boulder, and at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.  Much of Wolf's philosophical work is in the areas of Bioethics and Environmental Ethics, including papers on intergenerational justice, environmental policy, and the use of exhaustible resources over time.  Wolf also has a degree from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and regularly performs as a soloist on trombone, ophicleide and double-belled euphonium with bands around the state of Iowa.  He is especially interested in the use of the arts to promote awareness of public issues and environmental conservation.

David Zimmerman studied film at Emerson College and received an an MFA in creative writing at the University of Alabama. He has worked as a publicist at St. Martin’s Press in NYC and taught writing at Georgia Southern University, Dilla University College in Ethiopia, South College in Savannah and the University of Wisconsin, where he was also a fiction fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing.  Zimmerman’s work has appeared in several journals including Flyway, Madison Review, Puerto del Sol, SubTerrain, and Quarterly West.  His first novel, Socket, was published by Anvil Press.