Writing Sesshin: a guided writing and meditation retreat @ Hollyhock

By Ruth Ozeki | Published: October 31, 2011
June 29, 2012toJuly 4, 2012

The word “sesshin” in Japanese means “touching the mind” or “touching the heart.”  Sesshin is a special time in the Zen Buddhist calendar, when monastics step away from their everyday schedule and dedicate full days to meditation practice. As writers, we need these same periods of retreat and intensive practice to deepen and clarify our expression on the page. This sesshin will help participating writers touch the mind and heart of their writing practice. We will divide our time between guided meditation and writing exercises, discussions of craft, individual writing practice, supportive group work, and individual meetings with me about work-in-progress. Writers will leave with practices that will help sustain meditation and writing in everyday life.

I’ve been wanting to do this kind of retreat for a long time, so I’m really looking forward to it.

Here’s some information about Hollyhock:

An internationally renowned centre for learning and well-being, Hollyhock impacts personal, professional and social development through over 100 programs, and when space allows offers visitors a fantastic British Columbia island holiday, where you’ll enjoy wonderful Cortes Island accommodation.

Our spectacular natural setting on Cortes Island is an ideal backdrop for transformative experiences. We are linked intrinsically to our ecology, assisting us in providing a comfortable and safe environment where people can deeply connect with others, gain creative insights, and renew hope that a better world is possible.

Hollyhock is Canada’s leading educational retreat centre with over 28 years experience, but you can also think of us as a “refuge for your soul”, a place that allows you access to what matters, or simply time to rest, play and achieve wellness in BC.

For more information and to register, please check out the Hollyhock website.

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Re-training the Writer’s Mind @ Taos Writers Conference

By Ruth Ozeki | Published: October 31, 2011
July 15, 2012toJuly 22, 2012

This summer I’ll be teaching Re-training the Writer’s Mind at the Taos Writers Conference. I haven’t visited Taos for many years, and I’m really looking forward to it!

Here’s a link to a version of the workshop that I taught at Hedgebrook. The content will be similar, a five-day workshop with a focus on developing meditation and writing practices that inspire and support us as writers. But the Taos workshop will be part of a conference, rather than a retreat, so participants will be able to engage in a wealth of other writerly activities, too, including roundtables, readings, workshops, as well networking and just hanging out. And I’m really happy because my dear friend, novelist, and editor, Carole DeSanti, will be there, too, and offering a weekend workshop of her own. (More on Carole’s workshop and her new novel, The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. to come!)

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Pain Free: a creative conversation with Ruth Ozeki & Susan Squier

By Ruth Ozeki | Published: October 30, 2011
January 5, 2012
7:00 pmto8:15 pm

2012 Modern Language Association Convention

143. A Creative Conversation: Ruth Ozeki with Susan Squier

Thursday, 05 January
7:00–8:15 p.m., 604, Washington State Convention Center

Ruth Ozeki and Susan Squier will have a conversation on the theme Pain Free. Their conversation will wander from such agricultural innovations as genetically engineering animals so that they feel no pain, to questions of affect and academia, to Zen and suffering. The conversation will be interspersed with readings.

Susan Squier is the Brill Professor of Women’s Studies, English Literature, and Science, Technology and Society at Penn State University. She is the author, most recently of, Poultry Science, Chicken Culture: A Partial Alphabet (2011). Her other publications include:  Virginia Woolf and London: The Sexual Politics of the City (1985); Babies in Bottles: Twentieth Century Visions of Reproductive Technology (1994); Women Writers and the City: Essays in Feminist Literary Criticism (1984); Arms and the Woman: War, Gender, and Literary Representation (1989); Playing Dolly: Technocultural Formations, Fantasies, and Fictions of Assisted Reproduction (1999); Communities of the Air: Radio Century, Radio Culture (Duke University Press, 2003), and Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine (Duke University Press, 2004).

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