Starling's Murmuration - About S.Dennison

Bio

Sara Dennison has been facilitating writers for fifteen years in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Oregon and stewarding wild places since college. Sara, referred to as Dee in many circles, has a BFA and MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English with focus in Research, Composition, and Rhetoric. Her work engages with resilience, recovery, and absurdity in the wake of great loss. In recent years, she makes short and ekphrastic fiction, autofiction fiction, and flash. She often uses original photography, collage, and visual art in her written work. Her most recent pieces have been published by Pear Shaped Press, Alaska Women Speak, and Peregrine Journal. She is recipient of the Jason Wenger Award for Excellence in Creative Writing which she received for her MFA short story and ekphrastic flash collection, Bright Acidic Fruit. She lived and taught in Oregon for about ten years and about five in Minnesota before. Currently, she considers herself a recovering English professor and is busy making a life for herself as an environmental steward for a conservation non-profit in Door County, WI. She is currently working on a new collection of ekphrastic autofiction and doing some writing facilitation, and living life. SD is an Amherst Witers and Artist faciliator. She was introduced to the Amherst Writers and Artist method in 2019 at PDX Writers event in Portland and was so moved by this workshop space that during her sabbatical from teaching in 2021, she certified with AWA to became an affiliate. She is delighted by way the AWA method fosters inclusive communities that help writers and makers develop sustainable artistic practices.

Certified Amherst Writers and Artist Facilitator
Literary and Environmental Nonprofit Administrator
Trauma informed Educator
Ekphrastic Flash Fiction & Autofiction
Photography, collage, mixed media artist
Ikigai Coach

Auto Fiction

Synopsis: This work in progress is an ekphrastic epistolary retelling of a wild winding road of survival and adaptation. It shows how we must dismantle former selves to arrive at our most authetic ones.

Flash

Synopsis: An ekphrastic and short story collection centering on the subject of "manufacturing hope" when it's awfully hard to come by. The collection is born of grief, grit, and departures from the best of plans. The forthcoming culmination will result in the UAA MFA thesis capstone project. Yellow acts as the objective correlative unifying the collection.

A Novel

Synopsis: A novel/novella in progress born at the Elk River Guest Ranch on a DIY writing retreat in 2018 that led to a decision to return to school for an MFA in Fiction at the University of Alaska Anchorage in the CWLA Low Residency Program. It is novel in stories about the crossroad where survivors of childhood trauma must determine if they are to emancipate themselves from or succumb to generational cycles of addiction, mental illness, and abuse. Though the stories/chapters center around women with disparate definitions of resilience and grit, they point back to Bailey, a young woman, who has found her rock-bottom in a foreclosed house on the OR Coast she purchased with an unexpected inheritance. Bailey unearths clues about the disappearance of the previous homeowner, Denver, in a cache of recordings addressed to Quails which catalyzes a decision that will either free her from her past or chain her to it.

STAY TUNED. IT'LL BE A WHILE.

A Sabbatical

1) To become better equipped to facilitate creative writing workshop courses by obtaining training with Amherst Writers & Artists and aligning my creative writing curriculum with disciplinary best practices.

2) To become better equipped to help maker/teachers/teacher/makers discover, honor, and become advocates for their ikigai by becoming a certified ikigai coach, building a coaching website, posting relevant resources for maker/professionals, designing a workshop or workshop series, and developing a forum for faculty/staff enrichment.

3) To spend a year wholly immersed in my craft as fiction writer as to honor my own ikigai and thus better serve my writing students by completing my third year within my terminal degree MFA program with UAA, reading and reviewing relevant scholarship within the discipline, composing an article about relevant craft issues, and working toward completion of my first book of fiction.

Photography

Birds are a cherished subject matter. While much bird photography attempts to capture the grace and dignitiy of feathered kin, my focus is in finding them in their absurdities. Birds are characters, with a full spectrum of personalities. My hopes are to honor this about them.

I also like to photograph street art, architecture, sublime spaces and visionary worlds seen in intentional installations and created through the happenstance of street artists building worlds within existing urban landscapes. I'm fascinated by those who craft sanctuaries within the day to day and seek to share these moments in my photography.