Nature Reading and Writing Workshop with Erin Hortle

This workshop will appeal to anyone who wants to develop their own writing or add sophistication to their reading practice. It is one thing to read a piece of lyrical writing and appreciate its aesthetic; it is another thing to understand how an author shapes that piece of writing. In this workshop, Erin Hortle will guide participants through a series of curated readings and explain the writing techniques authors have used to compose the natural world into lyrical writing. Throughout, participants will have the opportunity to try out those writing techniques or the opportunity to delve into further readings.

Erin Hortle is an author and teacher. Her writing explores new ways of imagining human relationships with the more than human world, with a distinctly feminist bent. Topics she writes about currently include surfing and surf culture, pelagic birds, octopuses and ambergris. When she's not writing, she can usually be found curled up with a book, or floating and drifting in the Tasman Sea or Southern Ocean. The Octopus and I (Allen & Unwin, 2020), her debut novel, was published at the beginning of the pandemic and received rave reviews. Her second novel, A Catalogue of Love (Simon and Schuster, 2025), has just been released.