Rebecca Lawton: Rivers Teach Me to Write: A Guide to the Natural Flow of Words
July 19, 2025, 11 a.m.
Finley Center in Santa Rosa
Writers of all genres will be inspired by this conversation about how we can learn wisdom and writing lessons from rivers and water. With award-winning author Rebecca Lawton, we’ll look at examples of water- and nature-driven prose, discuss what works about them, and try our own hands at applying principles of flow to our writing-in-progress. Attendees are encouraged to bring burning questions about form and process, as well as writing tools so we can spend much of the time in creating, shaping, and optional sharing. This will be a safe space to explore roadblocks to progress, potential paths forward, and the wellsprings of our inspiration—this amazing, incomparable world we live in.
Becca Lawton, author, fluvial geologist, and former Grand Canyon river guide, holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the golden years at Mills College, a roster of eleven books she’s authored and co-authored, and literary honors that run the geographical gamut from a Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in northern Alberta to First Place in the 2009 Redwood Writers Poetry Competition, judged by past poet laureates Terry Ehret and Mike Tuggle. She lives beside an ephemeral stream in Sonoma, where she’s at work on Boatwoman: A River Memoir (due out in 2027 from Bison Books/University of Nebraska) and has essays and interviews forthcoming in The Sun, Terrain.org, and other wonderful media. Ask her anything.