Phil Condon, MFA, MS University of Montana
Associate Professor
Environmental Writing, Readings, & Thought.
Director, Environmental Writing Institute.
Faculty Advisor to Camas Magazine
see Environmental Writing within the EVST Program
WRITERS COMING TO EVST: TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS Sept 2008 REBECCA SOLNIT Sprg 2010
see Environmental Writing Institute EWI 9/13-17/2009 Elizabeth Grossman
see philcondon.com for information on books and background
Phil's recent essay publications include "Wings and Wheat" in High Desert Journal #2, Fall 2005, "Kith and Kin of Wildness," in the anthology A Road Runs Through It: Reviving Wild Places (Johnson Books, Boulder, 2006), and "Deep Blue Breath" in The Road RIPorter, 2006.
Recent readings and presentations include at the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) National Conference in Eugene in June 2005; at Nature of Words Conference in Bend OR in November 2005; at Associated Writing Programs (AWP) Conferences in Austin, March 2006, and in Atlanta, March 2007; at the Second Wind Reading Series in Missoula in November 2006; at the Wilderness Lecture Series at UM in February 2007; and at the Faculty/Graduate Student Research Conference at UM in April 2007.
Courses
EVST 167: Nature and Society, taught Fall 2002, 2003.
EVST 305: The Environmental Vision, offered each fall.
EVST 373: Nature Works, workshop class, offered each spring.
EVST 505: Literature of Nature Writing, offered each spring.
EVST 573: Environmental Writing, workshop class, offered each fall.
EVST 594: Publishing: The Next Steps, offered each Spring
Background
All the paths of formal education and experience have led me to one place: teaching writing. My undergraduate work for a BA in Writing ranged from poetry to technical writing. My graduate Creative Writing degree is an MFA in Fiction, and my MS degree in EVST emphasized nonfiction Environmental Writing. I've taught writing to graduate and undergraduate students in EVST and English, to children, high schoolers, university freshmen, and citizen writers in several communities. Beyond student age, interest, or the genre at hand, the basics remain: I try to learn as much as I teach; writing is a craft best learned in the doing; inspiration, encouragement, and hard work are the sun, water, and soil of the experience. The shape of the best writing classes I lead is a circle; the quality of the conversation I aspire to is Buddhist Right Speech: being kind, truthful, and helpful--all equally and at once. No easy task, but well worth the attempt.
All the roads of my informal education and experience likewise converge: sauntering to the natural rhythms of that different drummer. As a 37-year-old sophomore, I was a non-traditional student, and now as an associate professor who only started teaching full time after 50, I trust I'm a non-traditional teacher. As a young man I practiced a manual, itinerant trade--brick work--and what I loved about it was its elemental simplicity: take sand, water, clay, steel, and add the human hand. I also lived for 5 years without electricity in the Missouri Ozarks, pumping water on a bicycle, gardening and composting a quarter acre, walking and sitting in the oak-hickory forest. A Missoula resident for 20+ years now, I wake up each day grateful for the living place around us here and wide awake to the diverse challenges ahead for all of us who care for the beyond-human world.
Interests
Environmental and nature writing of all kinds, but most especially work with wild heart: I'm thinking of Merrill Gilfillan, Rebecca Solnit, David Duncan, Janisse Ray, Meridel LeSueur, Paul Gruchow, Terry T. Williams, Thomas Merton, Loren Eiseley, Craig Childs, Thoreau, W.S. Merwin, Cormac McCarthy, John Haines, Linda Hogan--just off the top of my head and the tip of the berg--tomorrow I may make another list. There's an ever growing biodiversity of writing and the best of it calls us back to the quiet, delicate, ferocious world beyond our doors and gives us the strength to go on with our work to make the world we find and the society we build more equitable, healthy, heartfelt, and sustainable. True writing takes many forms: a beacon, a reminder, a touchstone, an anthem, a bleached bone, a call to hearts. The toughest, most obvious tasks for environmentalists are in the field and the labs, the classrooms, boardrooms, and voting halls, but writing works, too--like water: slow and deep. Across all the years, as well as all our borders, words work--think of Thoreau, Muir, Austin, Leopold, Carson, Abbey, and Dillard. Those are some raging rivers, no doubt, but they swell from many creeks, streams, and rivulets, too. As I teach writing, I try to encourage and channel anyone who wants their words to join the flow and help turn the tide.
Books
Montana Surround: Land, Water, Nature, & Place. Johnson Bks, Boulder CO, 2004.
Clay Center, a novel. EWU Press, Spokane WA, 2004.
River Street, stories. SMU Press, Dallas TX, 1994.
Essays & Stories in High Desert Journal, Petroglyph, Northern Lights, Big Sky Journal, Shenandoah, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Manoa, , Epoch, Cutbank, Seattle Review, many other journals, and several anthologies.
Recognitions
Clay Center named one of 10 Best First Novels of 2004 by the American Library Association
Montana Surround, 2003 National Finalist: Mid-List Publishing CNF Book Competition, River Teeth Literary CNF Book Competition.
National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Writing Fellowship, Washington, D.C. 1993.
Faulkner Society of New Orleans, National Creative Wrtg Competition, Novel Award, 2001.
National Writers' Voice, Community Residency, 1996.