Week 3 Tammy's Trio
Week 3 of the Bradbury Trio Challenge
Welcome to 3/4 Bradbury Trio Challenges for January!
The Bradbury Trio [reading a poem, an essay, and a story every day] fuels my writing.
This trio structure inspires me to write after I read.
Good Words In = Good Words Out
My wish for you is the reading you engage in today leads you to writing that could not have been created otherwise!
Week 3 Trio:
Poem:
At a writing retreat in Colorado in 2022, I read this poem aloud and it conjured a young bear in the grove of trees next to the deck where our group was sitting. I captured a photo of him and he was the topic of conversation the rest of the week. We nicknamed him Carrots. [I am magic, but the garbage bins attracted him more than his love of poetry I imagine!]
There are so many pull lines that make this poem remarkable. The courage of youth is strong in this line:
When I was a kid, I was excited about carrots,
their spidery neon tops in the garden’s plot.
And so I ripped them all out.
I Remember The Carrots by Ada Limon, the United States Poet Laureate.
I would love to know what lines resonate for you.
Story: Serving Tray
Essay: What School Lunches Look Like Around the World (photo essay)
The photo essay is a wonderful writing prompt by itself. There are many responses to a photo that involves writing what is in the photo, what happened before the photo was taken, what happened after, or who took the picture.
Bonus Essay: Letter to A Stranger
This article with a link to a specific prompt created a book of letters that haunts me. I read this book years ago and then when I was at the Wild Rice Retreat with Pam Houston I heard her read her essay in workshop. It is a book I highly recommend. I invite you to use the prompt to think about strangers you have encountered in your life.
If you scan the table of contents you will see names of authors you know and love but there is an intimacy to these letters that will show you a different side of them. I came back to this book this week and felt compelled to share it with you.
Writing Prompt:
This week I want you to pay attention to how food and food related ideas are used in the readings. How do you use food in your own writing? What do you want to try in my own writing inspired by this piece? (It could be a topic, a repetitive line, an inventory, a structure, etc)
or
Write a letter to a stranger that impacted you.
If you like this concept and it fuels you I invite you to join me for 4 weeks of the Bradbury Trio Course!
This 4 -week course will begin on February 16, 2025
Read and write with a community for this course! We will have three Zoom meetings as well (recorded if you are unable to attend).
The themes are
Reading Week 1: Mirrors and Windows
Reading Week 3: Giving and Receiving
What people are saying:
“Taking the Bradbury trio is like going on a trip with the best tour guide you could dream of, but instead of attractions, Tammy is exposing you to writing from around the world, experiences you may have never discovered on your own. The poem, essay and short story structure cracks open your mind and allows you to experiment in ways you never thought possible. A piece I wrote in the last Bradbury Trio Course was short-listed in a flash fiction contest and has since been accepted for publication!” - Heather Clark Harris
“The Bradbury Trio with Tammy Evans enriched my writing practice in so many ways. It strengthened my skills at reading like a writer. It broadened my exposure to new authors and literary journals. And, it taught me to pay close attention to what I noticed in the act of reading which lead me to do the same while in the act of writing. I'm so glad I took this course!” - Nancy Sulaiman
Are you ready to enroll?
Course Price: $99
To enroll send an email to: bradburytriocourse@gmail.com and I will send you the payment information through Venmo or Paypal.
Your payment will be your confirmation to the course. Space is limited.
Questions? Send an email to bradburytriocourse@gmail.com
A little more about me: Tammy L. Evans is a writer, teacher, and coach living in a tiny house on a peninsula with her husband and adventure cat. Her location device is her loud laugh. She is currently working on a short story collection. Her poetry has been published in The Storyteller, FoxGlove Journal, Story Hall, Blue Insights, The Partnered Pen, and others. Her fiction has been published in Gone Lawn, Cabinets of Heed, Spelk, Five on the Fifth, Clover and White, Fiction Berlin Kitchen, and others.