our IDEA
The Environmental Storytelling Studio (TESS) is an environmentally-focused writing initiative that helps scholars unite scholarship with storytelling so their work is artful, appealing, and accessible to a wide audience.
our REASON
We know our planet is in trouble. We have plenty of solutions and enough evidence, research, facts. But facts are not enough to stir people to care deeply about lives and landscapes under duress. “A fact does not fully obtain the depth of a fact, the power of a fact, until it comes part of a story,” writes author John Freeman and TESS collaborator in his anthology, Tale of Two Planets. We agree. And that’s pretty much why we exist. Facts don’t change people, but stories can.
our UPDATE
In 2023, TESS was based at the Institute at Brown University for Environment and Society because that’s where our co-founder , Bathsheba Demuth was also based. In 2024, TESS transformed into an independent, mobile entity, led by director and co-founder, Kerri Arsenault with assistance from Harvard grad, Cory Beizer. Now, TESS can travel year-round to any institution, organization, or group to work with your faculty, department, students, or colleagues. This allows our whole operation to be flexible and global rather than tied to one place or one institution.
Think of TESS as a roving environmental storytelling university—without the red tape! In fact, that’s another reason we exist. Not only to bring scholars’ writing to more people, but to reach more scholars by taking a detour around traditional academic paths.
our 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, academic language, or academic publishing.
By studying the art and mechanics of literary narratives—through close readings, writing exercises, large group discussions, small group confabs, one-on-one mentoring, and more—participants will explore the promise and perils of environmental storytelling.
Studios are wildly diverse and are adapted to the needs of the cohort, and may include working on a whole manuscript or just page one. Discussion topics may also include interviewing techniques, how to pitch a story or a book to a trade publisher, how to write about living beings, or how to write about people who died 100 years ago. We also help scholars navigate literary techniques such as metaphor, movement, scene, dialogue, structure, transitions, rhythm, pace, point-of-view and plot, as well as the more intangible aspects of literary narrative, like memory, imagination, emotion, and voice.
TESS has the good fortune to be supported by incredible editors, writers, thinkers, and instructors—who we call collaborators—to assist us in arranging, planning, or co-teaching our Studios, as well as advise, cheer us on, or provide texts we can study and discuss…texts that deserve our attention, enrich our imagination, and are exemplar in the narratives we believe express the essence of environmental stories. Sometimes they make guest appearances in our Studios, which also offers a model for thoughtful, fresh engagement with environmental storytelling.
We are happy to work with you remotely, but we love (and prefer) to join you in-person, for this also is part of our scheme…to cultivate community in real life.
The basic parameters of Studios are listed HERE. We can adjust days, instructors, guest speakers, topics etc. 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.
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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), legal anthropologist and a certified emergency medical responder, and 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 has served as the William Coleman and Vilas Research Professor of History, Medical History, and Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison and the 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, 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, 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, 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, Ph.D. in anthropology from The New School for Social Research