Writing in the wild

Join local luminaries of prose and poetry for a writing workshop at Harmon Canyon Preserve. You’ll learn more about the cultural and natural history of Harmon Canyon Preserve, and write your impressions of the natural environment from fact and from your creativity. Facilitators include Phil Taggert, Mary Kay Rummel, and Dr. Raquel Baker.

Mary Kay Rummel’s poetry books include Nocturne: Between Flesh and Stone(Blue Light Press,2020),The Lifeline Trembles, What’s Left Is The Singing(Blue Light Press, 2010), Cypher Garden Blue Light Press, 2014. Other books of poetry are Love in the End(Bright Hill Press, 2008), The Illuminations (Cherry Grove Collections 2006), Green Journey Red Bird (Loonfeather Press), The Long Journey Into North (Juniper Press) and This Body She’s Entered, a Minnesota Voices Award winner from New Rivers Press.

Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including RUNES, Bloomsbury Review, Nimrod (as an award finalist), Whistling Shade, Water-Stone Review, Comstock Review, Askew, the Irish journal The SHOp, and Dust and Fire, where she is the 2009 Diane Glancy Award winner. In addition, her works appear in To Sing Along the Way , an anthology of Minnesota women poets published by New Rivers Press, and Poetic Voices Without Borders 2, published by Gival Press. Her short fiction is forthcoming in an anthology from Wising Up Press. Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate of England, chose the title poem of Love in the End to be exhibited at London/Art. “Eclipse” was shortlisted for the Féile Filíochta International Poetry Competition in Dublin.

Dr. Raquel Baker earned a PhD in English Literary Studies from the University of Iowa. She specializes in Postcolonial Studies and 20th- and 21st-century African literatures in English. She received a BA in Psychology from San Francisco State University and a MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Postcolonial and Transnational Literatures at California State University Channel Islands where she teaches courses on topics including creative writing, science fiction, black literatures, and African literatures in English, Southern African literatures, theories of subjectivity and liberation.She presently runs a writer’s workshop at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA. She teaches at Cal State Channel Islands and hosts a local TV show, “Where are my people at?