View the archive of my 90-minute class and discover the Five Things I’ve Learned about the ways that creativity arises from the soil of our most fundamental relationships – with the land, with our family history, with motherhood, and with our children.

My name is Camille Dungy. I’m a poet, writer, editor, and scholar who has published four volumes of poetry and two works of non-fiction. My creative work is driven by a multitude of themes but I find myself writing, again and again, about cultivation. The cultivation of our shared history, the cultivation of family, the cultivation of a relationship with the greater than human world, the cultivation of my own garden of earthly delights. 

In my new book, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, I write about the intersection of my two passions: being a mother and attempting to nourish a garden in my native Colorado. Soil tells the story of my efforts to rehabilitate the soil and introduce native plants, to create a life-giving space for my family and the local plants and animals during a time of global pandemic, an increased national awareness of social injustice, and the broadening trauma of environmental devastation. But I’m also interested in the history of gardens and public lands and environmental writing, which often excluded people of color and certain kinds of women as well. 

For me, these subjects are as inseparable as braided roots. I see creativity as arising from the soil of our most fundamental relationships: with the land, with our family history, with motherhood, and with our children.

I’m excited to discuss these relationships with my old friend, Steve Almond, in our upcoming 90-minute session, Five Things I’ve Learned about Tending the Gardens of Creativity and Motherhood. We met in graduate school as single people without much to name as writers, and no land to grow on (I did keep houseplants even then). But we now move through the world as parents, working writers, and fellow gardeners.

I hope you’ll join us. 

-Camille Dungy