Finding Inspiration from Collections: Writing Workshop

Recommended ages 14+, all levels of experience welcome!

Join us for a workshop to unleash your creativity! Write poems, meditations, short essays, or flash fiction in praise of monarchs, milkweed, and other inspiring creatures in the Bell Museum’s collections. This fun and friendly creative writing class will be led by poet Kathryn Nuernberger and animal behaviorist and biologist and writer Marlene Zuk. All levels of experience are welcome!

Over the course of an afternoon, you'll look at beautiful and surprising items in the Bell’s collection for inspiration and have an opportunity to visit the new exhibit Monarchs and Milkweed. You'll receive fun writing exercises, as well as tips and tricks to help you express your creativity in new ways. We'll share some examples of writing about nature that we love as examples of techniques for expression you can try in your own work. Bring your notebook and pen, feelings, and curiosity for an exciting experience finding inspiration beyond the display cases in the heart of the Bell Museum.

Participants can also participate in a reading by Kathryn Nuernberger and Marlene Zuk at 6:30 pm at Milkweed Books. You will be invited–but not required–to share your own writing at the open mic at the reading.

KATHRYN NUERNBERGER is the author of the poetry collections, RUE, The End of Pink and Rag & Bone. She has also written the essay collections The Witch of Eye and Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past. Her awards include the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an NEA fellowship, and “notable” essays in the Best American series. She has received fellowships from the H. J. Andrews Research Forest, the Bakken Museum of Electricity in Life, and the American Antiquarian Society for her creative writing about science and the history of science. She is a University of Minnesota RIO Artist-in-Residence — inspired by Marlene Zuk's research on the Pacific field cricket and its parasitic fly she is writing poems about cricket behaviors, songs, and the nature of togetherness. HELD: Essays in Aftermaths, a collection of flash essays about symbiotic mutualisms and ways of being together, will be published by Sarabande Books in November 2025.

MARLENE ZUK is Regents Professor of ecology, evolution, and behavior at the University of Minnesota. She studies the evolution of animal sexual behavior and animal communication. The author of Paleofantasy and Sex on Six Legs, among other works, her latest book is Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test, which was longlisted for the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. She has received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Science Award, the Edward O. Wilson Naturalist Award, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Host or Publisher Bell Museum