Create in Community

A workshop for 55+ writers focused on place and the senses. Please bring your favorite journal and writing implement, your creative mind, and a memory you’ve been wanting to write about. We’ll do some writing samples that may just lead us toward where we want to go! 

This workshop is free and limited to 10 participants. Please reserve your spot by emailing hello@paoniabooks.com

Watercoloring the West: Trees, Mountains, Clouds

Greg Marquez will be teaching a watercolor skills class at Root & Vine Saturday morning from 9-12, Saturday September 21. 

We love Greg's work and are delighted he's coming to teach in Paonia!

Pre-registration required. Limited seats available. $65 per seat. 

Geared toward beginning to intermediate painters, Greg's class will take an elemental approach. He'll explore a variety of techniques, including glazing, wet-on-wet and puddling or flooding. 

Students should bring as many of the following materials as they have, although Greg will also share some of his own, 

1. Three brushes of decent quality (synthetics or synthetic blends are fine) one being a flat, wash brush.  

2.  140 pound cold press paper. 
I like the 11x 14" because you can cut it in half and still have decent sized paper or watercolor journals. 

3.  For colors I like Cobalt Blue, a green like Permanent Green Light or Hookers Green are good, a good lemon yellow Like Azo Yellow or Hansa Yellow, a good strong red like Cadmium or Winsor Redand a blue/red like Quinacridone Magenta . For a dark gray/blue I like Indanthrone Blue, or a Paynes Grey. I also use Burnt Sienna. 

4. A water container that is at least a quart, a board to support the paper, a pallette, some binder clips or masking tape and some rags. A couple of pencils will be handy.

Greg Marquez grew up in that mythical place called the West and is a Colorado Native. Largely taught by the precious beauty of open spaces such as land and sky, Greg paints traditional landscapes, wildlife, and people. His work been awarded four corporate commissions, and his watercolors and acrylics have appeared in juried shows across Colorado. Currently, Greg is an Arts Longmont Member Artist and is represented by Muse and River’s Edge Galleries. He has most recently participated in Boulder Arts Week, taught drawing at Denver Art Museum’s Nomad #68, and received a Roser Mini-Grant to work on a mural project with freshmen at CU–Boulder entitled “Running Wild.” Learn more about Greg at https://www.artquez.com/

The Land Beneath Your Feet: Writing Inside of Place with Karen Auvinen

In this workshop, we examine the landscapes we inhabit as the container for the stories we have to tell about our lives. We will consider how to create a sense of place in our writing (whether fiction, personal essay, or memoir) and then how look at how allow the natural world to do much of the emotional heavy lifting in our work. Other considerations include how landscape gives rise to character and can be used to create mood or provide psychological space. Plan for craft talk, examples, and writing time.

Karen Auvinen is an award-winning poet, mountain woman, life-long westerner, writer, educator, speaker, and the author of the memoir Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living (Scribner).

Her work has appeared in The New York Times,LitHub, Real Simple, Westword, and The Rumpus, as well as numerous literary journals. A collection of short stories is forthcoming. She is working on a novel.

Karen is the founder of Writing Wild Workshops and is on the Graduate Faculty in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University and also teaches writing workshops at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, for Fishtrap Writing the West and Hudson Valley Writers Center, in addition to teaching film, pop culture, and storytelling to first-years at the CU – Boulder.

Karen lives in the Colorado mountains with the artist Greg Marquez, their dog River, and Dottie the Cat.
Class: KVNF Community Room, Saturday September 21 9-12 pm
Limited availability, pre-registration required. Email us or stop in to sign up. Sliding scale of $50-65 per seat. 

Manuscript Consulting
For an additional fee, writers may sign up for a 30-minute consultation (which includes a written feedback letter) with Karen. Sliding scale $65-$90 for reading time, letter, and discussion of your work.

Submit one piece, up to 18 pages (docx file, double-spaced, 12-point font). Please submit by September 1st kauvinen@western.edu. Consultations will be scheduled
Karen Auvinen requests the following from everyone enrolled in the one-on-one consultation taking place on the afternoon of Saturday, September 22. 

FOR PROSE, PLEASE SUBMIT ONLY ONE CHAPTER OR ESSAY, up to 18 double-spaced pages in a docx file (12 point font). Please submit only completed pieces. If you have questions about this, or if you prefer to submit poems, email Karen ahead of the deadline.

If your work is a part of a larger book project, briefly summarize your project so Karen knows the context of the piece.

Attach your work as a docx FILE (labeled with your last name/genre/Paonia submission) to the email and use the following subject line: "FULL NAME, Paonia Consultation Contribution.” 

After she receives your work, she will read it and be excited to talk to you about her ideas on how to further develop it. She will email you to set up a good time to meet.

Sunday July 21, 2024

12 noon Paonia Books back room

7 seats available $35 per seat, Prepayment and preregistration required

Mike Finders is a guitarist, bandleader, singer, entertainer, educator in his multi-decade career in story and song. For the last fifteen years he has toured Colorado and the West with his bluegrass band, FY5, as well as his blues band, Spidercat, and the occasional solo show. He is a two-time winner of the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at Merlefest in Wilkesboro, NC, and his songs are regularly played not only on syndicated and public radio, but also at jams around campfires at bluegrass festivals across the west. He has four grown children, a cat, a thirty-year teaching career, and family roots in the middle of Iowa.

Mike’s workshop focuses on techniques to get over writer’s block, generating ideas for melody and chord progressions, and will include some writing prompts and opportunities for workshopping together.

Saturday June 22

12-1pm

$20

Preregistration and prepayment required.

No matter their level of skill or accomplishment, every writer begins every work by writing a first draft. Yet this fundamental skill is rarely examined, and even more rarely taught. So is first draft always just free-writing, end of story? Are there better/worse ways to go about it? In this informal discussion class, we'll start by exploring a few of the tools and takeaways from First Draft Lab, a class Kimberly McClintock and I taught at Denver's Lighthouse Writers Workshop. But that's just our jumping off point. Participants are encouraged to send questions to the bookstore in advance regarding any phase or aspect of the writing process; we'll use those questions to guide the direction of the discussion once things get rolling. 

David Wroblewski is the author of the internationally bestselling novel The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, an Oprah Book Club pick, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and winner of the Colorado Book Award, Indie Choice Best Author Discovery award, and the Midwest Bookseller Association’s Choice award. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle has been translated into over twenty-five languages.

Class: Risking Love: Writing Poems that Help Us Fall in Love In With the World as It Is

A pre-concert playshop with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Saturday, May 18, 2024

12-2 KVNF Community Room

$35 PlayShop Only

$50 Playshop and Performance at Blue Sage

Limited seats available

“The more stuff you love, the happier you will be.”

—Ross Gay, The Book of Delights

When bad news charges the air, it is more important than ever to both acknowledge what is difficult and explore the necessity of joy, the need for love. This paradox is the cornerstone of Rosemerry’s daily writing practice and at the heart of what she’ll share in her performance at the Blue Sage that night—an ecstatic show of music and poetic medicine with her guitarist Steve Law and headliner Goodnight Moonshine. Take a peek behind the creative curtain—how the honey gets spun. In this two-hour playshop, we’ll read and write poems that help us see, honor and celebrate all the beauty still vital and present. We’ll practice perspective—a poetic superpower—and explore how this skill helps us meet a blank page (and the world) with wonder. Process intensive. Sharing optional. As Rilke writes, “We transform the world from within our hearts.” Let’s practice. Together. All levels of participants welcome—from never ever wrote a poem before to Pulitzer Prize winners.

ABOUT ROSEMERRY:

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives with her husband and daughter in Placerville, Colorado, on the banks of the wild and undammed San Miguel River. She served as San Miguel County’s first poet laureate (2007-2011) and as Western Slope Poet Laureate (2015-2017) and was a finalist for Colorado Poet Laureate in 2019.

Devoted to helping others explore creative practice, Rosemerry is co-host of Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process, co-founder of Secret Agents of Change (a surreptitious kindness cabal), and co-leader of Soul Writers Circle. She directed the Telluride Writers Guild for ten years and co-hosted Telluride’s Talking Gourds Poetry Club for another ten years.

She has 13 collections of poetry, and her work has appeared in O Magazine, A Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, American Life in Poetry, on fences, in back alleys, on Carnegie Hall Stage and on hundreds of river rocks she leaves around town. Her poems have been used for choral works by composers Paul Fowler and Jeffrey Nytch and performed around America. Her most recent collection, Hush, won the Halcyon prize. Naked for Tea was a finalist for the Able Muse Book Award. Other books include Even Now, The Less I Hold and If You Listen, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. In 2023 she released All the Honey; Beneath All Appearances an Unwavering Peace (a book for grieving parents with artist Rashani Réa); a book of writing prompts, Exploring Poetry of Presence II; and Dark Praise, a spoken word album with Steve Law.

She’s won the Fischer Prize, Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge (thrice), the Dwell Press Solstice Prize, the Writer’s Studio Literary Contest (twice) and The Blackberry Peach Prize. She’s widely anthologized including Poetry of Presence, How to Love the World, The Path to Kindness, Send My Roots Rain, Come Together: Imagine Peace, Dawn Songs, and To Love One Another.

THIS CLASS IS FULL. We added

second session in May.

CLASS

Dates: Wednesday April 10,17, 24, from 5-7 pm. Mud season pricing for locals at $50 per seat. Pre-registration and pre-payment required.

I like to think of creative nonfiction as the intersection where the facts of a story and the art of shaping the story meet. Working with the various ways in which I might tell a story is one of the joyful places of discovery for me as a writer: what will I learn from what I’m writing? In this three week class, with seats for seven students, we’ll explore elements of creative nonfiction, including voice and structure. You’ll have weekly short readings, plus writing assignments, and we’ll do some in-class writing and discussion. This class is suitable for new and experienced writers. You’ll leave class with new ways of seeing the stories you want to tell.

Taught by Emily Sinclair. Emily’s stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals including Colorado Review, Missouri Review, River Teeth, Juxtaprose, and more. Her work has been recognized by Best American Essays and Best of the Net.

CLASS

THIS CLASS IS FULL! This is a repeat of April’s class that filled quickly!

Dates: May 8, 15, and 22 from 5-7 pm.

Mud season pricing for locals at $50 per seat. Pre-registration and pre-payment required.

Seven seats available.

I like to think of creative nonfiction as the intersection where the facts of a story and the art of shaping the story meet. Working with the various ways in which I might tell a story is one of the joyful places of discovery for me as a writer: what will I learn from what I’m writing? In this three week class, with seats for seven students, we’ll explore elements of creative nonfiction, including voice and structure. You’ll have weekly short readings, plus writing assignments, and we’ll do some in-class writing and discussion. This class is suitable for new and experienced writers. You’ll leave class with new ways of seeing the stories you want to tell.

Taught by Emily Sinclair. Emily’s stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals including Colorado Review, Missouri Review, River Teeth, Juxtaprose, and more. Her work has been recognized by Best American Essays and Best of the Net.