COURAGE to WRITE grantee Amy Kennedy recently attended the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. During her time at Bread Loaf, Amy workshopped the manuscript for her next project, All’s Well That Ends, a nonfiction book about how Evangelical eschatology affects our country’s climate policies and our Western culture’s overall views of climate change.
The project for which she was awarded a grant, Vanishing Points: Words for Disappearing, will be published later this year.
“As a writer who didn’t go the academic route, Bread Loaf was such a life affirming experience. It’s been over twenty years since I sat on that side of a formal workshop, and the first time I’ve workshopped anything with other environmental writers. Considering the moment we are in politically, being surrounded by other people writing about the environment was not only an exercise in craft, but an exercise in resistance and optimism.
It’s been a tumultuous year. Getting Vanishing Points to the finished product stage has felt like such an uphill battle, ironically because of climate change. So it’s been lovely and exciting to workshop a new project (All’s Well that Ends) that is in the research stage. The COURAGE to WRITE Grant gave me the motivation to finish Vanishing Points, and Bread Loaf gave me the motivation I needed to believe that this new project was interesting enough to keep working with. Everytime I sat down with someone new to talk about our projects, it became an informal pitch that turned into a great conversation, and in many cases, a friendship that I intend to keep up with.
Meeting and working with Lauren Markham – my workshop leader – was probably one of the most motivating experiences of the week. Her book Immemorial is one that has helped me process my own ecological grief, so having a front row seat to her generous teaching methods and her thinking process was formative. Her belief and support in all of our writing was infectious. The COURAGE to WRITE continues to connect me – directly and indirectly – with other writers. And one thing that writers have in common with each other right now is that we all seem to be fighting for not only our individual but our collective imaginations. There are so many apps and companies steering our imaginations down disastrous paths, all while they plan a mostly unlivable future. The conversations that I have with other writers and artists right now all seem to be rooted in regaining that collective imagination and building a future that isn’t good for just a handful of people. I had so many of those conversations at Bread Loaf.
For me, the biggest struggle with writing has always been not having the time and space to get my words out. And what the de Groot Foundation has helped me access over and over is that time and space. My 2024 COURAGE to WRITE grant allowed me access to summertime childcare, giving me the time to do deep work and finish the Vanishing Points manuscript. The encouragement and financial support to attend Bread Loaf provided me with more of the time and space that is so hard to come by in my everyday life. (My kids continue to be both the biggest inspiration for and distraction from my writing.)
And what a space the Bread Loaf campus is. Considering the chaos of everyday life right now, Bread Loaf felt otherworldly. It felt like a utopian summer camp for adults. I was able to start my days wandering through the Green Mountains and end my days listening to frog songs and watching hundreds of lightning bugs. And in between those two things were the lectures, readings, workshops, and conversations about climate change, environmental policy, AI, autocracy, parenting, and writing craft.
This experience was truly life-changing – formative, restorative, challenging, and invigorating in a way I haven’t experienced in decades, maybe ever.”
Visit Amy’s website: alongnewthread.com