Welcome to SwampFire online, showcase
for the annual SwampFire Retreat,
organized by
Dawn Burns and
Mary Catherine Harper.
Hosted in 2024 by Bonnie Jo Campbell
at H House in Comstock, Michigan,
and from 2011 to 2023 at Steve Smith's
4 Corners Gallery near Angola, Indiana.
The creek at H House
Click here for Zoom workshop details
Sixteen years of SwampFire retreats
The founder of SwampFire, Dawn Burns, makes sure that each year's retreat is held in a quiet, rural place where artists and writers are free to create and share their work in a supportive environment. In the past, potter Steve Smith has generously hosted the retreat on his art gallery grounds near Angola, Indiana.
In 2024 Burns asked novelist Bonnie Jo Campbell if she would open her family's H-shaped house, tucked in deep woods near the Kalamazoo River, to the SwampFire group. Bonnie not only said "yes," she and her husband, Christopher Magson, made each and every retreat participant welcome. As did their donkeys, chickens, and housecat, Alice.
What an amazing experience the yearly SwampFire retreat is, whether in Dawn's home state of Indiana or on Bonnie's Michigan land. And how wonderful that H House's fine kitchen and bedrooms are available for participants to stay several days—as Dawn envisioned so many years ago—to develop their creative ideas, to get in-depth feedback from fellow artists, to share meals and enjoy the quiet of the creek and trees.
The 2024 SwampFire participants and host: (left-to-right standing) Dawn Burns, Tracie Swiecki, Joyce Meier, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Ilse Schweitzer, Colleen Alles, Bex Miller, (sitting) Mary Catherine Harper, Michelle Marshall, Cait West, Zee the Goblin, Amy Wise.
Eva English captures the relaxing mood of SwampFire in this photo of Steve Smith and Dawn Burns bathed in the glow of the 2023 bonfire.
SwampFire founder, Dawn Burns, sitting in the just-harvested wheat field.
Participants of the first SwampFire retreat: Dawn Burns, Jan Bechtel, Mary Catherine Harper, Rachel Baker.
Organizers and host of SwampFire, Dawn Burns, Mary Catherine Harper, and Steve Smith. Notice one of the retreat participants, Andrea Baldwin, hamming it up in the background :)
Dragonflies, SwampFire symbol,
for how they so often hover over
gatherings. (Photo by Dawn Burns)
Mary Catherine Harper:
The joy of our 15th anniversary
Mey Hasbrook's 2018 project:
Naming our grandmothers
Eva English's 2014 photos:
Steve Smith's Raku workshop
Some of our SwampFire members at their 15 October 2022 reading at Everybody Reads, Lansing MI: Mike Copperman, Dawn Burns,
Scott Harris (bookstore proprietor), Mary Catherine Harper,
Kait West.(Photo by Andrea Baldwin)
Photos from earlier SwampFire retreats
Art talk between poet Rachel Baker and potter Steve Smith of 4 Corners Gallery
Marian Plant and Jennifer Repka duel over who gets the last s'mores as Marcy Bauman watches the show.
Marcy Bauman and Joyce Meier relax on a lazy SwampFire afternoon
Linda Bale Krouse takes a little snooze after a breakfast of Dawn's Belgian waffles.
On these pages the artists and writers of the enterprise share what it means to push the boundaries of visual and language arts.
Students write all day and a professor carves on a clay bowl after a writing session
SwampFire supports the work of artists and writers through retreats