Spring Retreat Instructors

Sherrie Flick is the author of the novel Reconsidering Happiness (University of Nebraska Press) and two short story collections Thank Your Lucky Stars (Autumn House Press) and Whiskey, Etc. (Autumn House Press). She is a senior editor at SmokeLong Quarterly, served as series editor for The Best Small Fictions 2018, and is co-editor for Flash Fiction America (W. W. Norton, 2023). Her column “In a Writer’s Urban Garden” runs monthly in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and her longform essays have been published in The Wall Street Journal, Ploughshares, Belt Magazine, and New England Review. She is the recipient of a Golden Quill Award, a Writing Pittsburgh fellowship from the Creative Nonfiction Foundation, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts individual artist fellowship for fiction, and a two-year Arts Experience Initiative grant from the Heinz Endowments. She teaches in the Food Studies and MFA programs at Chatham University. 

www.sherrieflick.com

Award-winning singer-songwriter Megan Bee writes with an unquenchable wanderlust and a raw love for the land. Her lyrics are woven with imagery and metaphor from the natural world.  She loves connecting people to their environment and nurturing their own expression through creative writing.  She has over 15 years’ experience teaching environmental education, songwriting workshops, library programs, school residencies, and various summer camps.  She has released five albums of original music and toured coast to coast.

www.meganbeemusic.com  

Adam Remnant is a songwriter, musician, producer, and educator who lives and works in Southeast Ohio.  Adam got his start fronting the folk-rock band Southeast Engine. As the principal singer and songwriter of the band, Remnant and his bandmates garnered critical acclaim from publications such as NPR, Paste Magazine, Pitchfork, American Songwriter, and many more. Remnant continues making music under his own name today. Adam has released the 2016 EP, When I Was a Boy, as well as the 2018 LP, Sourwood. Remnant’s signature baritone voice and literary songwriting act as the focal point in the productions. Additionally, Adam works as an educator, as the program manager and lead instructor for the Stuart's Opera House After-school Music Program (AMP). Adam loves exploring the power of creativity and finding new ways to unlock our creative potential. 

https://www.adamremnant.com

Emma Loomis is a trans naturalist who is particularly enamored of birds. Her debut collection of poetry, evening primroses, (April 2021) is available from Recenter Press. Her poems also reside in Feels Zine, Hoxie Gorge Review, Hematopoiesis Press, Recenter Press, Scapegoat Review, and Sheepshead Review. Her work involves poetry, phenology, agriculture, and sculpture, and examines historiographies of body and place. She lives with her partner in rural, southern Ohio.

Joe Brehm led Rural Action's Environmental Education Program since 2010 interacting with more than 20,000 kids in Appalachian Ohio, empowering youth leaders, and gathering educators together.  His affinity to the natural world began when his dad took his brothers and Joe for walks in their local woods. They played in the stream and observed deer tracks in the mud. One sunny autumn afternoon a large buck stepped forth on a grassy hilltop and gazed down at him, ivory antlers shining above those wild eyes, and Joe has never been quite the same.  Joe has been keeping a nature journal since 8th grade; you can visit http://opposable-thumbs.com/peregrinate/ to read his blog posts.

For over a decade, Molly Jo has been a dedicated student of ecology, ethnobotany, herbal medicine, yoga, mindfulness, and music. By weaving the power of mindfulness, story and music into transformative movement within classes and offerings, Molly Jo nourishes the sense of wonder and excitement inherent in all students encouraging reconnection to a sense of place within the Self, our communities, and the great web of life, and a lasting reverence for our extraordinary existence. Jo is a lifelong student and recognizes with gratitude the profound teachings offered all beings on and off the mat.