Roaming in the Heart's Field: A Workshop on Place
A workshop by Paulette Bates Alden

In her essay "Place in Fiction," Eudora Welty says that "being shown how to locate, to place, any account is what does most toward making us believe it… Feelings are bound up in place…. Location is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of ‘What happened? Who’s here? Who’s coming?’ – and that is the heart’s field."

In this workshop we will explore the heart’s field of place through discussion of what such concepts as region, land, and "home" mean to us as people and writers; we’ll study examples of writing which evoke place very strongly, analyzing what goes into such writing and how and why it affects us; and we’ll do writing exercises designed to mine the meaning and feelings associated with our own places, generating in the process ideas, stories, and memoirs. There will be opportunities for reading aloud or manuscript critiquing by the group. This workshop is appropriate for fiction and memoir writers whose work is grounded in place.