2025 Writer's Workshop
Writing as Spiritual Practice
February 27-March 2, 2025 | Prose or Poetry Classes | $655
Experience a four-day workshop with award-winning Kentucky authors, Fenton Johnson and Maurice Manning. This intimate opportunity to develop your writing skills will include meals, breakout sessions and musical performances along with nature and curatorial experiences
unique to Shaker Village.
The workshop will include two paths: Prose or Poetry, led by longtime friends Fenton Johnson (prose) and Maurice Manning (poetry). The pair met 15 years ago when Johnson’s sister said to him, “I hear there’s a poet who just moved into the neighborhood, would you like to meet him?” Johnson eagerly replied, “I’m always interested in meeting a poet.”
Attendees will focus on writing as a spiritual practice. The wounds of the world must be addressed by changing how people see ourselves in relation to the planet. That requires courage and more complete self-knowledge. Here we will turn our adventuring spirit within, to undertake an interior journey. Where better to undertake that journey than at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill?
Kentucky native Fenton Johnson is the author of three novels and four works of creative nonfiction, The Man who Loved Birds, At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life, a New York Times Editors’ Pick and Kentucky Humanities Kentucky Reads Book of the Year, Scissors, Paper, Rock. He has been a contributor to National Public Radio, Harper’s Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine, and has received numerous literary awards. He has taught in the nation’s leading creative writing programs and is Emeritus Professor of the University of Arizona. He continues to lecture and teach nationally. In 2024 he was named to the Kentucky Writers Hall
of Fame.
Kentucky poet Maurice Manning's eighth book of poetry is Snakedoctor. His first book, Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions, was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. His fourth book, The Common Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, Time, and The New Yorker. He is the co-creator with Steve Cody, of The Grinnin' Possum Podcast, featuring poetry, old-time music, and history. A former Guggenheim fellow, Manning teaches at Transylvania University and lives on a small farm in Washington County.
The Writer's Workshop is Supported by and in Partnership with:
