Writing Culture

“Writing Culture” is one of the pillars of our work at the Northwest Writing Institute and in the Documentary Studies Certificate Program. In imaginative writing and documentary studies courses, we write to discover our thinking, to shape our cultures, and to develop new ways to teach cross-cultural understanding. Writing Culture is a path into our hidden stories, a place to translate and interpret culture, and an opening to new voices.

The Writing Culture Summer Institute, directed by Joanne Mulcahy from 2002 through 2005, brought together poets, fiction and nonfiction writers, students, teachers, and workers from anthropology, psychology, social service, and related fields. Four workshops ran concurrently for a week.  Participants attended short afternoon sessions in memoir, poetry, and other genres, offering a chance to explore a second area of interest. Faculty readings and other evening events rounded out the schedule.

Faculty included nationally and internationally recognized writers Judith Barrington, Marilyn Bowering, Ted Conover, Francisco Goldman, Philip Graham, Natalie Handal, Ruben Martinez, Luis Urrea, Wang Ping, and Evelyn White as well as ethnographers Alma Gottlieb, Kirin Narayan, and Paul Stoller. In 2006, the Institute shifted topics to local culture with “Let Us Now Praise Portland.”

NWI faculty Joanne Mulcahy and Kim Stafford worked with Portland State University faculty member Steve Johnson and writer Wendy Willis to shape a week of collecting and writing the stories of diverse Portlanders. Mulcahy, in collaboration with poet and translator Paul Merchant and writer Susan Fletcher, taught the 2007 Institute on literary and cultural translation, culminating in “The House of Translators,” a gathering of more than forty local translators.

The recently launched Documentary Studies Certificate Program continues the work of Writing Culture, now including digital stories, photography, film, audio and other media for recording and shaping the stories of our time.