Writing About Place: Series Opening
Thursday, May 7, 2026 at 5:30pm
Join us for the opening session of the Writing About Place series—a four-week writing workshop exploring how landscape, memory, and ecology shape story and voice.
Do you want to observe the place you live more fully and find words for your connection to the land? Do you have family stories shaped by this landscape that you’d like to write down and share? These workshops explore the value of careful observation and listening, and the importance of writing about the places where we live. Our South County landscape holds layered human and ecological stories, and each featured writer brings a distinct perspective on craft and storytelling.
By deepening how we notice, describe, and connect with the landscapes around us, writing can also strengthen our understanding of why conservation and stewardship matter to our communities.
Presented in collaboration with Charlestown Land Trust, Hopkinton Land Trust, Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association, Cross Mills Library, and Earthinform Studio, this kickoff session introduces the themes of the series and features readings and reflections from our guest writers, including Wanda Hopkins, Grace Farrell, and Miles Hardingwood.
This event is free and writers of all experience levels are welcome. Participants are asked to preregister Here.
📅 Thursday, May 7th
🕒 5:30pm
📍 Cross Mills Library
🎟️ Free and open to all—please preregister Here.
Writing About Place is a collaborative community series featuring four writing workshops and two guided hikes focused on observing, experiencing, and writing about the landscapes around us. This series is presented in partnership by the Charlestown Land Trust, Hopkinton Land Trust, Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association, Cross Mills Library, and Earthinform Studio.
About the Writers:
Wanda Hopkins
Wanda Hopkins is a citizen of the Narragansett Indian Tribal Nation. She has served in Tribal government and has ministered at the Narragansett Indian Church for over twenty-five years. Ms. Hopkins serves as a Native American Community Advisor to the University of Rhode Island and the Tomaquag Museum. She is a respected culture bearer and writer who has shared her knowledge and perspective with churches, schools, and civic organizations throughout Rhode Island, across the United States, and in Canada. Ms. Hopkins holds a Master of Arts in English from the University of Rhode Island. Her scholarly interests focus on regional Indigenous literature and its influence on national and local Indigenous movements, policies, and legislative agendas. Her future research includes documenting the lives of her Narragansett relatives interred at the historic Babcock Cemetery in Hopkinton, Rhode Island.
Grace Farrell
Grace Farrell, R. C. Reade Professor emerita of Butler University in Indianapolis, is the author and editor of five books as well as numerous essays on Poe, Melville, Lillie Devereux Blake, I. B. Singer, Beckett, Anne Tyler, and 19th and 20th c. American literature and culture. For thirty-five years, she taught literary texts and their cultural contexts. A weaver as well as a writer, Grace co-founded the Carolina Fiber and Fiction Center in Rhode Island. While conventional advice has long told us to write what we know, Grace encourages writers to write towards what they do not know, what they can, perhaps, never fully know. Home again in Rhode Island, within sight and sound of the ocean, she uses writing to embrace the beauty and the inscrutable mystery of the universe that surrounds us.
Miles Hardingwood
Miles Justice Hardingwood is a poet and creative from Brooklyn, NY. He is a 2023 National Student Poet and a 2022 NYC Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador. His poetry has received a Scholastic National Gold Medal and an American Voices Medal. He has performed at venues such as The White House, The Schomburg Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and Vice President Kamala Harris’s Black History
Month Celebration. He attended the Kenyon Young Writers Workshop and the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, and is now a student at Brown University, where he is pursuing a concentration in Literary Arts.
