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Instructors

Andrew Helton
Ginger Teppner

Andrew Helton

Instructor

Andrew Helton

Andrew Helton is an Indiana-based writer, artist, and printmaker. He holds a BA in English Literature and MA in Writing and Publishing from Portland State University, an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University, and completed postgraduate research in philosophy with a focus on political theory and human rights studies at Emory University. His writing has appeared in Bombay Gin, Erasure, Project Semicolon, Phylogeny, Not Enough Night, and more, while his artwork has been featured in various exhibitions across the United States. Currently, his work predominantly explores interiority, the limits of the body, the democracy of language, and epistemic justification.

”Andrew Helton is precise. This precision is not fragile. Its strength is born of rigorous closeness. Every endeavor he initiates is created with intention and thorough engagement. He is not afraid of exertion or difficulty; in fact, he relishes the uncomfortable challenges necessary for growth. Because of this, no question is left unexplored, whether he is training for a powerlifting competition, printmaking, editing a manuscript, creating a life with his equally talented wife, or writing poetry. His poetic subtleties are the elemental stuff the Earth is made of: rooted in equal parts encyclopedic knowledge and profound compassion. His keen sensitivity, intuition, and imagination direct him time and again towards the inexpressible, that which lies beyond words. His integrity drives him, not only to personally experience all of everything but to create a new space for the rest of us to inhabit as well, as witness and witnessed, and we are better for it.

Ginger Teppner

Ginger Teppner

Instructor

Ginger Teppner

Ginger Teppner received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University and her BA in Cultural Studies from Empire State College. Her work has appeared in About Place Journal, Bombay Gin, Erasure, Semicolon, Upstairs at Duroc, Phylogeny, Shambhala Times, Not Enough Night, Metropolitan, Yew Journal, and more. Her chapbook "28 Gestures" appears in the anthology Precipice, and her chapbook I Should Have Been Linen was chosen to be included in the summer 2017 issue of The Lune. She self-published a chapbook: Watercourse and is currently teaching English at Polk State Gateway to College Collegiate High School while continuing to lead writing workshops. Her written work investigates the collapse of subject/object dichotomy, the democratization of language, and the transcendental nature and essence of words while juxtaposing the exotic with the prosaic.

”As a poet, Ginger Teppner is an architect, a textile weaver, a master builder of places where there had once only been sensation and longing. Her propensity for evolving the world into nouns creates spaces that can only exist in language—a world where thoughts and feelings we cannot express can live and, for a moment, we are free of the pain of the limits of our bodies. Somehow, these spaces do not only exist on the page or in her voice. She embodies them as a teacher, as a mother, and as a friend. To know her is to be held entirely and with the same gentleness and consideration as the gorgeous language she creates.

Entering Ginger's work is like waking up in a field of clothes hung out to dry. As you move you feel the sharpness of the lemon-yellow sun graze the back of your neck between damp sheets, you smell the bloom of a lilac, you hear the flutter and screech of birds looking for food before an evening rain comes, telling you an evening rain is coming. You feel the pain of the memory. Not nostalgia. Not a memory of the past. A memory that is and was here now with you and the pain is knowing it can somehow only live in this place and you will have to leave. And she is the linen—blocking your view, forcing you to feel your way, occasionally reaching up in the breeze to brush your cheek. She is the movement in the fracture.

Andrew Helton
PROGRAMS

Whether or not you identify as a writer, you are warmly invited to join the supportive and creative environments we cultivate together.

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“

Ginger and Andrew have created something that’s been exactly what I’ve needed. A class outside of an institution. A clear structure while also being flexible and open. And a group of people I know I can turn to at any time with creative work. They put so much care into making a place that nurtures all of our creative lives, and it’s always a comfort to be able to look forward to the next iteration.

Evan Burgess
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The Earth Of is interdisciplinary, non-institutional, literate, and humane. Is it a workshop or a seminar, a course or a community? It’s all of those and something else. The Earth Of keeps evolving. It’s rigorously grounded and radically open. It’s historically aware, socially inquisitive, queer, gentle, well connected, and ready to be your new friend.

Christine Lorenz
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The two years (and two publications) I spent with The Earth Of were a place of community, of processing the chaos and growth of our times, and of play and experimentation. I can't thank Ginger and Andrew enough. What they created was medicinal on many layers.

Monica Lacey
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The Earth Of is a collaborative, supportive, and expansive community where you are encouraged to test the edges of thought and creativity. The workshop material is well planned to support discussion and the participants work. Always a delight to engage in this space.

Tamara Fox
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Life itself can be understood as the search for our stories, as the enactment of our stories, as the endless hope of evidence that we exist, and the craft of finding ourselves in the nuance of our individual voice within our shared stories. It is in this deep structural sense that I celebrate our Arts Letters and Numbers writing workshops directed by Ginger Teppner and Andrew Helton. These workshops create a space for a remarkable gathering of writers to explore their voices, to expand the individual poetic imagination and make space for our shared stories. Together they build us, and our earth of, out of words and dreams. I am profoundly grateful to Ginger and Andrew for creating the atmospheres within which everyone discovers such depth and voice and vision and create gifts to us all and to the earth itself.

David Gersten
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I never would have imagined that the conversations between us would become as deep as they did, that a book would be inspired by the process, and that my poems would be midwifed by so many helpful fellow creatives.

Nancy Ring