Saturday, August 16, 2025
Writing In the Bog Workshop
Workshop facilitated by Sheila Packa
10:00 am- 3:00 pm Meeting in the Lois King Education Center at the Zim Sax Bog, 8793 Owl Avenue, Toivola, MN 55765 (see directions below).
Course Fee: $60/non-members (includes a FOSZB membership); $40/FOSZB members and Minnesota Master Naturalists
Activity Rating: 1
Join writer Sheila Packa for this eco-writing workshop at the Sax-Zim Bog. This will be a workshop for writers interested in crafting stories or poems with a strong ecological or environmental emphasis. The bog is a useful metaphor for the creative process, whether you are a beginner or an experienced writer. Sometimes it’s a slog. We have difficulty finding our way. The bog helps us to slow down, and at some point, cross a threshold into a creative flow. The sense of time is altered. We hope you will join us!
This generative workshop will begin with writing about the landscape. It might be the bog or perhaps another place that has marked you. Barry Lopez thought the external landscape greatly affects our psyche, or internal landscape. He says the internal landscape develops as we grow up in or live within a particular place, and our life reflects that its contours and relationships. Using a variety of guided writing exercises, participants will have time to brainstorm, do a few writing exercises, and have discussion. As your story emerges, we will look at how to let it grow organically. Last, we will review quick editing tips. At the end of the day, those that would like to share excerpts of their work will have an opportunity to do so.
There is no better time that now to write about landscape and the environment. Whatever you write will make it stronger!
Sheila Packa, formerly Duluth’s Poet Laureate. All four of her immigrant grandparents settled in Zim, Sax, Toivola, and Forbes in the early 1900s. Her recent books, Night Train Red Dust: Poems of the Iron Range and Surface Displacements. She edited “Migrations,” an anthology of 75 Lake Superior area writers writing about change and transitions. All of these books explore the histories and landscape of northern Minnesota. Sheila has taught Composition and Creative Writing at Lake Superior College and in the community. To learn more about Sheila and her works/style check out her website: https://sheilapacka.com/
Registration is now open!
Head over to our website to register: Writing in the Sax-Zim Bog
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