the IDEA
The Environmental Storytelling Studio (TESS) is an environmentally-focused writing initiative that helps academics unite scholarship and expertise with storytelling so their work is artful, appealing, and more accessible to a wider audience.
the REASON
We know our planet is in trouble. We have plenty of solutions. We have enough evidence, research, facts. But facts are not enough to stir an enough people to care deeply about lives and landscapes under duress. And if not enough people believe our planet is in trouble, there’s no foundation for agreement on positive environmental change.
the UPDATE
In 2023, TESS hosted 15 scholars at Brown University for our first studio. In 2024, TESS transformed into an independent, mobile entity, led by Director and co-founder, Kerri Arsenault. Now TESS can travel year-round to any institution or organization to work with your faculty, department, students, or group. This allows the whole operation to be flexible and global. Think of TESS as a roving environmental storytelling university—without the red tape!
TESS has also gathered more writers, thinkers, instructors, and collaborators to assist with this expansion to help arrange, plan, and co-teach our studios. With such a diversity of talent, we can offer studios in a zillion configurations and to suit any cohort’s needs.
the STUDIOS
The word “studio” reflects and encompasses and fosters the atmosphere we want to encourage at TESS, namely creativity, collaboration, and community instead of being bound by the obligations of academic systems, language, or publishing.
By studying the art and mechanics of literary narratives—through close readings, in-class writing exercises, group discussions, one-on-one mentoring, and reading each other’s work—participants will explore the promise and perils of environmental storytelling. We will help participants navigate things like metaphor, movement, emotion, scene, dialogue, transitions, rhythm, pace, point-of-view and plot, as well as the more intangible aspects of literary narrative, like memory, imagination, and voice.
We will also be joined by authors whose writing offers a model for thoughtful, fresh engagement with environmental storytelling. We will focus on texts that deserve our attention, enrich our imagination, and are exemplar in the narratives we want to help participants convey. Discussions may also include topics such as interviewing techniques, finding an agent, writing OpEds, pitching stories to magazines, or how trade publishing works.
The basic parameters of our new studios are listed HERE on our Studio page We can adjust the particulars (days, instructors, guest speakers, topics) to suit your needs and budget, as long as those needs fit within our larger mission and ideals—to make academic writing more artful and accessible.
We can also work with your ideas.
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Who doesn’t love a little praise?!
Taking a [writing] class with Kerri a few years ago changed my book and my life. Don’t miss the opportunity.
Ieva Jusionyte (Ph.D., EMT-P) is a legal anthropologist and a certified emergency medical responder. She is the Watson Family University Associate Professor of International Security and Anthropology at Brown University
TESS nurtured a spirit of openness and generosity, where a mix of talented writers, editors, and publishers helped a group of aspiring academics, from advanced graduate students to senior scholars, learn more about the art and craft of storytelling. The experimental exercises and exchanges sparked a newfound sense of creativity and freedom toward my own writing, which I know I couldn’t have found on my own.
Gregg Mitman, William Coleman and Vilas Research Professor of History, Medical History, and Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison and ERC Research Professor, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society
TESS rewired my brain (in a good way!), and the friends and connections I made are like gold.
Scott Thomas Erich is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Washington College, and the Howell Postdoctoral Research Associate in Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Studies in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia
Because of TESS, I've been incorporating sustainably-minded pedagogy into all levels of French that I teach. Beyond writing, sharing the ideas I learned from the workshop and bringing it forward has really helped my teaching assistants, students, and coworkers to rethink their place and space within sustainability and action within the languages.
Claire-Marie Brisson is a Preceptor in French at Harvard University
TESS was transformative for me. As a graduate student in U.S. History and American Studies, I felt revived and energized by the possibilities for environmental literary writing that Kerri and Bathsheba encouraged. Through TESS, I also developed enduring writing partnerships with participants.
Perri Mellon is a PhD Candidate at Boston University
An idea that I first mentioned during TESS about curry dams in Japan ended up resulting in this piece for Orion. It was a very direct result of the wonderful space Kerri and Bathsheba created for us all.
Emily Sekine has a Ph.D. in anthropology from The New School for Social Research