“If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.”

-Wendell Berry

Place is not just where we hang our hats, or where we go for the holidays—place shapes our identity; it’s a language that lives outside us. In this workshop, we’ll spend the morning exploring Salem through writing prompts. We’ll slow down and notice things we rush by on our way to the train. Take time to think about history and our place within it. You’ll have a chance to write in parks, by the water, in a museum. Maybe we’ll make up stories for the statues, or write odes to the secret lives of the people you pass on the street every day. We’ll make a map of the sounds, and smells, and sights of Salem, by doing what writers do best: paying attention.

Is your mobility limited? There will be a number of writing prompts at the Salem Athenaeum for those who would like to participate in the workshop but are unable to make the walk around town.

Danielle Jones holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Boston, and is assistant director of the Writers House at Merrimack College. Her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets, Incessant Pipe, Memorious, and elsewhere. She’s a recipient of a 2014 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award.