The Wrangell Mountains Writing Workshop

History

The Wrangell Mountains Writing Workshop is one of WMC’s longest-running, most impactful workshops. Nancy Cook started the workshop in 1998, featuring visiting writer and instructor Gretchen Legler. From 1998 – to 2019, the Old Hardware Store housed writers from Alaska, and the Lower 48, including Scott Russell Sanders, Robert Michael Pyle, and Kathleen Dean Moore. A few of those participants from the early writing workshops stayed and made a home in McCarthy, like Maria Shell and Patt Garrett, who eventually bought cabins right across the street from the Old Hardware Store.

From Bringing Back The Wrangell Mountains Writing Workshop, published in the Copper River Record, April 28, 2022

Bringing Back the Wrangell Mountains Writing Workshop

(Published in the Copper River Record April 28, 2022)

Frank Soos and the Wrangell Mountains Writing Workshop

Frank Soos was an important contributor as a visiting writer to the Wrangell Mountains Center over several decades beginning in 2001, the summer after I became his student in the MFA program at UAF.

He taught three different residential workshops at the Old Hardware Store in McCarthy: twice through the Wrangell Mountains Writing Workshop and once through the Rasmusson Foundation funded Creative Cross-pollinations workshop which included Jonny Gray, Maria Shell, Margo Klass, and Nancy Cook, and Jeremy Pataky on staff. The quilt and book images below come from that fine crew.

The only writer who spent nearly as much time in the Wrangells with the WMC was Frank's beloved student Sherry Simpson. We were so lucky to spend time with both of them in the Wrangells, and travelling the Copper River with the pair of them was a great honor of my lifetime. I do believe I am one of few MFA candidates who can look across the table at a thesis defense to think, yep, I saw that guy skinny dipping in a silt pond once upon a time warp along a river.

Frank was especially touched by the old mining era relics around McCarthy which seemed to remind him of his coal mining heritage in Virginia. His parents owned a grocery store, and he was always curious to keep up with whoever was working the kitchen. He contributed to the Porphyry Place capital campaign and advocated for the WMC through his influence with Peggy Shumaker and the Alaska State Council on the Arts.

- Nancy Cook

Frank was the visiting writer the first year Maria Shell came to the Wrangells in 2001. More about that long trip here:

https://talesofastitcher.com/2019/01/18/the-wrangell-mountains-center/

He also joined Wrangell Mountains writers on two different river trips including the Copper River Stories Expedition, hosted jointly with Friend of Kennicott, Chitina to Cordova in 2003. This blog is about that trip which included painter Kes Woodward, poet John Morgan, beloved essayist Sherry Simpson, plus me, Mark Vail, Kevin Ewing, Dana Greci, Thea Agnew, Vicki Snitzler, and David Grimes at the helm of rafts Earth, Sky, Sun, and Gray Matter.

https://keslerwoodward.typepad.com/painting_in_the_north/2005/06/new_kesler_wood.html.

Frank joined Tom Kizzia for a workshop we called "True Story" in 2014. This is a write-up on that workshop:

https://49writers.org/2014/06/nancy-cook-wrangell-mountains-writing.html

He participated in one Writing on the River trips to Chitina in 2015, delighted to be reunited with his pal David Lynn Grimes. He can be seen paddling enthusiastically in the white boat...

Visiting Writers and Themes

Pandemic! - 2020-2021

Writing on the River presents Riversong with Nancy Cook, David Grimes, Michelle McAfee, Robin Child 2019

Writing on the River presents Riversong with Nancy Cook, Gretchen Legler, Ruth Hill, David Grimes, 2018

Writing on the River presents Riversong with Brad Warren, David Grimes, Nancy Cook 

Writing on the River presents Riversong with Nancy Cook, Michelle McAfee, David Grimes, Robin Child, 2016

Writing on the River with Frank Soos, Nancy Cook & David Grimes, 2015 

WMWW presents True Story. Workshop & Public Reading with Frank Soos & Tom Kizzia, 2014 

Writing on the River McCarthy to Chitina Workshop, Public Reading, & Writers Raft Trip w/ Sherry Simpson, 2013. 

WMWW presents Dancing the Great Divide. Workshop & Public Reading w/ Justin Torres. Wrangell Mountains Writing Workshop, Wrangell Mountains Center, McCarthy, AK, 2012. 

WMWW presents Wild Comfort. Workshop & Public Reading with Kathleen Dean Moore. Wrangell Mountains Writing Workshop, Wrangell Mountains Center, McCarthy, AK, 2011 

WMWW presents Creative Cross-pollinations.  Workshop & Public Reading with Frank Soos MFA, bookmaker Margo Klass, quilt artist Maria Shell MFA, and performance studies guru Jonny Gray PhD, Wrangell Mountains Writing Workshop, 2010. 

WMWW presents Nature as Guide.  Workshop & Public Reading w/ Scott Russell Sanders

 WMWW presents  How to Love this World. Workshop & Public Reading w/ Sandra Alcosser, McCarthy, AK, 2008  

WMWW presents Writing Alaskan Truths. Workshop & Public Reading w/ Seth Kantner. McCarthy, AK, 2007 

 WMWW presents Writing in the Wild Tense. Workshop & Public Reading w/ Robert Michael Pyle. McCarthy, AK 2006  

 WMWW presents The Sense of Wonder. Workshop &Public Reading w/ Kathleen Dean Moore. McCarthy, AK, 2005  

WMWW presents Writing from Place. Workshop and Public Reading w/ Susan Fox Rogers, 2004  

WMWW presents Poetry and the Landscape of Self. Workshop & Public Reading w/ Derick Burleson, 2003 

WMWW presents Images of Alaska Workshop & Public Reading w/ Gretchen Legler, 2002

WMWW presents Landscape and Memory. Workshop & Public Reading w/ Frank Soos, 2001 

WMWW presents Memory and Imagination. Workshop & Public Reading w/ Gary Holthaus. Kennicott, AK, 2000  

WMWW presents The Craft of Personal Memoir. Workshop & Public Reading w/ Sherry Simpson. McCarthy, AK, 1999 

WMWW presents The Sense of Place. Workshop & Public Reading w/ Gretchen Legler. McCarthy, AK, 1998