Exploring Spirituality in Nature Writing: A Writing Workshop Series in Creative Nonfiction
Conference Room, Center for the Study of World Religions, 42 Francis Ave., Cambridge, MA
Wed., Sep. 9, 2026, 4 – 6 p.m. 
Registration is required and limited to 12 participants.
This workshop series meets on four consecutive Wednesdays: September 9, 16, 23, and 30, from 4-6 pm. Because each session builds on the previous one, participants are expected to attend all four sessions.
Please register to attend in person.
When William Ellery Channing claimed in an 1828 sermon that “we are brought into harmony with the creation” in proportion to our pursuit of our own “likeness to God,” he could not have known that his theology would help inspire a literary tradition that continues to explore spiritual growth through encounters with the natural world. American nature writing developed some of its strongest roots in the ideas of Channing and the American Transcendentalists he influenced. Emerson explored selfhood and spirituality through nature, famously writing of standing in the woods and sensing that he was “part and parcel of God.” Thoreau likewise wrote of the spiritual expansiveness he experienced through his connection with the natural world. This tradition extends through writers such as John Muir, Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, and Kathleen Dean Moore. Today, nature writers continue to explore the spiritual dimensions of life through encounters with the more-than-human world.
In this creative nonfiction workshop, participants will practice nature writing as an expression and exploration of spirituality. Before the first session, participants will be invited to read brief excerpts from texts central to the nature writing tradition. During the workshop, participants will discuss the readings and elements of writerly craft, focusing on strategies authors have used to explore, reveal, and experience spirituality through nature. Sessions will also include guided writing exercises and prompts. Between meetings, participants will be invited to complete writing exercises that may inform future discussions. At the conclusion of the series, the instructor will provide individual feedback on a short essay submitted by each participant.
Rochelle L. Johnson received the 2026 John Burroughs Nature Essay Award and the 2025 Georgia Review Prose Prize for her essay “Phantom Pains,” which was also featured by Longreads, Memoir Land, and Nature. A recipient of the Carnegie Foundation’s Idaho Professor of the Year Award and the 2024 Outstanding Achievement in the Humanities Award from the Idaho Humanities Council, Johnson is the author of numerous creative and scholarly works, including Passions for Nature: Nineteenth-Century America’s Aesthetics of Alienation. She has also coedited several volumes, including Thoreau in an Age of Crisis.
A leading scholar of nineteenth-century naturalist Susan Fenimore Cooper, Johnson’s research has been supported by fellowships from the Beinecke Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and other organizations. She holds the Bernie McCain Chair in the Humanities at the College of Idaho, where she teaches environmental studies, and serves as the 2026 Robert Frost Chair at the Bread Loaf School of English, where she teaches literature and creative writing. She is a past president of both the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment and the Thoreau Society.
Programming Series: Transcendentalism
Gazette Classification: Art/Design, Poetry/Prose, Religion
Sponsor: Center for the Study of World Religions
Contact: Laurie D. Sedgwick, CSWR Events Coordinator, [email protected]
More info: cswr.hds.harvard.edu…