Meet our Educators: Victoria Blanco

Victoria Blanco

Writer

El Paso, TX

11/1/21 – 11/5/21

Standing at a lookout point above a sprawling cityscape, writer Victoria Blanco points out the sister cities of El Paso, Texas and Juárez, Chihuahua. Born and raised in El Paso, Victoria is deeply familiar with the richness and complexity that emerges from the U.S. - Mexico border. The border severs what Victoria calls a “cultural corridor” that runs south from El Paso to Juarez. She explains that this corridor is not only responsible for the flow of goods across the border but “also the flow of stories, of food, of families.”

  During a five-day writing workshop, Victoria emphasized the importance of seeing beyond the dominant narratives that mainstream news sources push about the border. She applies this lens to her writing, too: Victoria spoke to how writing genres are both a helpful framework for writing but can also act as a tool of restriction. She encouraged Semester in the West students to “bend the lines of genre” in their writing to tell stories that hold more nuance. In her own writing, Victoria often combines memoir style storytelling with her anthropological research with indigenous communities in Northern Mexico. 

With family on both sides of the border, Victoria is accustomed to hours-long lines that stand between her and loved ones. Victoria is no stranger to the way the border separates but does not let it confine her movement between the two countries.  “They can build their walls as high as they want,” she tells us, “But I’m going to come here with my kids, I’m going to cross the border, I’m going to go visit my in-laws four blocks away. And I’m never going to stop doing it.”

By Alli Shinn

Meet our Educators: Ann Walka

Ann Walka

Poet and author

Bluff, Utah

10/05/2021

            Sheltered from the rain in a sandstone alcove, Ann Walka sits with Westies on the first day of a week-long writing workshop on Comb Ridge, Utah. With an unwaveringly gentle demeanor and warm smile, she instructs students to draw a blind contour of their hand, and then write a list of all the sounds they can hear: exercises to calm the mind. She then sends everyone off to wander, find a spot alone, and use the senses to write boundlessly about the rich desert landscape.

Ann is no stranger to place-based writing. Splitting her time between Bluff, UT and Flagstaff, AZ, Ann writes poetry and stories about the landscape and history of the American West. Using her intimate understanding of the intersection of ecology, geological processes, and human history of places like the Utah desert, Ann inspired Westies to work toward writing a “deep map of place,” a concept inspired by desert writer Ellen Meloy. She encouraged students to draw from their direct experiences, nurture curiosity, notice particularities, use the imagination abundantly, and share work aloud every day. With Ann’s guidance, students wrote weather reports, list poems, origin stories, imaginative pieces about human life in the desert, and personal essays rooted in place. Ann’s welcoming attitude, inventive assignments, and deeply creative spirit allowed Westies to slow down and think deeply about the landscapes around and within them.

By Erika Goodman

Editor’s note: the photo above is from SITW 2018 as we did not take a portrait of Ann on SITW 2021

Meet our Educators: Sarah Gilman

Sarah Gilman

Freelance writer, editor, illustrator

Methow Valley, WA

9/6/21- 9/8/21

Gliding up a small hill covered with crunchy bluebunch wheatgrass, Sarah Gilman tosses a juniper branch to her rambunctious terrier, Taiga, and looks out over the expansive North Cascades in the Methow Valley. Twenty students walk with her, and as she crests the peak, she motions for them to find a seat before giving a journal prompt: “Write about something that gives you hope.”

Sarah, a member of the first Semester in the West in 2002, is a writer whose illuminating work about the intersection of people, landscape, and other species has been featured in The Atlantic, High Country News, National Geographic News, Smithsonian.com, The Guardian, Patagonia’s The Cleanest Line, and The Last Word on Nothing.

Sarah joined Semester in the West 2021 to host a writing workshop, helping Westies digest their experiences with biologists, fire experts, ranchers, land managers, and tribes in rural Washington and Oregon, into short, creative essays known as Epiphanies. To some, it may seem odd that Sarah encouraged Westies to walk the landscape, write poetry, and journal about topics unrelated to their papers’ focus. But with a soft smile, she candidly explained, “The best ideas don’t come from staring at a computer screen.”

Every afternoon for three days, Sarah met with Westies one-on-one to brainstorm, workshop, and edit their pieces. She encouraged concise and focused writing by challenging students to make sure every part of the essay actively grounded the main idea in evidence and tangible experience.

During the last evening of the writing workshop, Westies read their creations to their peers under the night sky. The next morning, as Sarah drove away with Taiga barking out the truck window, Westies smiled knowing her presence will undoubtedly guide their future as writers, critical thinkers, and community members. 

By Josh Matz

Photo Credit: Nathaniel Wilder