If you’ve answered yes to at least two of the above, then I’m happy to say that the PRC is offering a workshop you might be interested in! I am also happy to say that this workshop is the first (and certainly not the last) collaboration between the PRC and Grub Street. (A non-profit writing center where Boston Gets Writing)

The workshop is called Staring and Wonder and will meet at the PRC on Saturday, May 3, 2008, from 9am – 4pm. It was inspired by the PRC’s upcoming New England Survey exhibition, which, in turn, was inspired by Amherst poet Robert Francis’s poem, “New England Mind.” We’ll begin by discussing some suggestive and provocative statements by a host of writers who care about staring—W.G. Sebald, Flannery O’Connor, John Gardner, Cesare Pavese, Wallace Stevens, George Szirtes, Mark Strand, and Elizabeth Bishop, among others—and then spend the rest of the first part of our day engaged in acts of staring ourselves. The objects of our attention will be the astonishing landscape–based photographs in New England Survey . (Such as the above image by Barbara Bosworth) We’ll dedicate the second part of our day to what happens after that something becomes interesting. We’ll allow these images of the New England landscape to enlarge of our sense of place and our capacities to pay attention, to wonder, and wander in our writing. We’ll follow our eyes-and our imaginations-in words. This workshop is open to all writerly appetites: narrative, poetic, memoiristic, essayistic, imagistic, and beyond.

For more information on the program, including how to register, please visit the PRC’s website.