Eastern Oregon University’s nature writing conference draws Union County readers

Eastern Oregon University brought free public readings and $75 classes back to La Grande for the third New Nature Writing Con, giving Union County residents a low-cost weekend of literature, ecology, and hands-on instruction on campus and downtown. The three-day program ran from Friday, June 19, through Sunday, June 21, and was built to draw students, teachers, aspiring writers, and readers who follow the region’s landscapes as closely as its books.

Opening night filled hq on Depot Street, where Eastern faculty read from new and upcoming work alongside Claire Boyles, Laura Da, Melissa Matthewson, and visiting writer Annie Lampman. Lampman’s novel The Origin of Ava was part of the lineup, with the book framed as an ornithological story about three lives tied together by fate, flight, and nature’s healing power. Saturday’s schedule moved to Lewis Auditorium in Zabel Hall on the EOU campus, where Katherine Larson and Miranda Schmidt read and discussed their latest books before graduating MFA students gave thesis readings. A light luncheon and a series of hour-long classes in Zabel Hall 107 rounded out the day.

The weekend was free to the public for the readings, while the classes carried a $75 registration fee, making the event one of the more accessible literary offerings in Union County. EOU has placed the conference inside its MFA concentration in Landscape, Ecology, and Community, which was formerly called Wilderness, Ecology, and Community and was renamed to better include both natural and built environments. The university says the conference is meant to push nature writing beyond the familiar walk-in-the-woods or homestead story and toward more inclusive, experimental, interdisciplinary work.

That broader approach has local roots. EOU says the conference grew out of La Grande Lit Week, which began in 2022 with a Union County Chamber of Commerce seed grant, and local partners have included Fishtrap, JaxDog Café and Books, Liberty Theatre Cafe, Side A Brewery, Cook Memorial Library, La Grande Parks and Recreation, hq, The Local, Elgin Opera House, and Art Center East. The first New Nature Writing Con took place in 2024, and a quarterly New Nature Writing Series now continues through the academic year.

EOU also points to a longer literary lineage in La Grande. Its visiting-writer tradition dates to the early 1960s and has included Czeslaw Milosz, Denise Levertov, Richard Hugo, and William Stafford. This year’s roster carried that tradition forward with Boyles, whose debut novel Appraisals is due from W.W. Norton in August; Da, whose poetry collection Severalty was published by University of Arizona Press in 2025; Matthewson, whose second essay collection The Fire Trees is due later in 2026; Larson, whose Wedding of the Foxes: Essays was published by Milkweed in 2025; Schmidt, whose debut novel Leafskin came out from Stillhouse Press in 2025; and Lampman, a creative writing professor at Washington State University Honors College who has received support from both the Idaho Commission on the Arts and the Bureau of Land Management.