New Beginnings in Writing

with Jack Ridl
August 22, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Tuition: $150
Materials Fee: N/A

Jack Ridl believes that making art and writing generate realizations and valuable experiences that can happen no other way, and he brings to this workshop decades of experience in “de-threatening” the artmaking process. He hopes that you will leave at home any notions of departing Ox-Bow with something completed; instead, he will encourage you to start many things—written pieces, creative notions, seeds of ideas. He strives to create an instant community in which conversation throughout the day is stimulating, joyful, and worthwhile.

Plan to bring: writing utensils and paper or notebook and memorable tokens from your life that may inspire writing and collaboration.

Photo by Nolan Zunk, Summer Fellow 2025

Jack Ridl (he/him), Poet Laureate of Douglas, Michigan, is the author of books including All at Once and Saint Peter and the Goldfinch. His work has been recognized by the Foreword Reviews Gold Award for Poetry, the Society of Midland Authors Poetry Award, the Center for Book Arts chapbook award, and selection as best sports book of the year by the Institute for International Sport. Individual poems have been published in the Georgia Review, Poetry, Colorado Review, Rattle, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Field, Poetry East, and elsewhere. Students at Hope College named him both Outstanding Professor and Favorite Professor, and in 1996, Carnegie Foundation/CASE named him Michigan Professor of the Year. More than 85 of his students have earned their MFAs, and over 100 are published; several have received first book awards. Every Thursday, he posts a monologue on YouTube as part of his video series The Sentimentalist.