The Creative Unknown Book Club: Wintering Edition
❄️ A seasonal creative community · Winter Solstice 2025 through Spring Equinox 2026 🌱
About This Gathering
This isn't a typical book club. It's a portal into winter itself.
From the solstice through the equinox, we're creating a creative community that mirrors the season: quiet, reflective, fallow, incubating. A space to practice wintering together.
We'll read and marinate in Katherine May's Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, but the book is a companion, not the centerpiece. The centerpiece is us, those of us who need permission to slow down, to rest without guilt, to trust that something is growing in the dark.
About the Book
Wintering weaves memoir, nature writing, and winter rituals to explore rest, illness, uncertainty, and the rhythms that shape us. Katherine May writes about the quiet seasons we don't talk about much but all move through.
It's contemplative. Calming. The kind of book that feels like permission to stop producing and start incubating.
Your Hosts
Roz Duffy: Explorer of creative thresholds. Collector of books (and now vinyl), living amongst the trees outside Philadelphia.
Anna Weltner: Documentary filmmaker and creative writer from Portland. Master of the perfect red lip and believer in rest as resistance.
What to Expect
This is a low-pressure creative container. No homework. No "should haves." Just space to winter together.
Two gatherings (60-90 minutes each on Zoom):
Friday, December 19, 2025: Meet each other, share what drew us here, discuss early impressions or intentions for the season
Friday, March 13, 2026 or thereabouts: Reflect on the winter we've moved through, what emerged, what we're taking into spring
One optional midwinter gathering (date TBD, likely a weekend in Jan/Feb):
A midpoint check-in, the deep middle of winter, the longest stretch of darkness
Optional group chat (Signal or WhatsApp):
Share quotes, reflections, moments of your own wintering
Join, lurk, leave, or skip entirely. Whatever serves you.
How This Works
Read at your own pace. Let the book find you where you are.
No pressure for brilliant insights. Show up as you are: tired, curious, quiet, talkative, somewhere between.
Flexible participation. Attend one gathering or all. Engage in chat or just observe. We trust you to know what you need.
Structured prompts + open conversation. We'll hold the container while leaving room for what wants to emerge.
Questions to Sit With Before We Begin
What draws you to Wintering right now?
What does creative rest actually look like for you?
When have you experienced a personal winter, a season of waiting, illness, grief, or transformation?
What are you incubating?
Themes We Might Explore
The seasons and cycles in creative and emotional life
Wintering with intention rather than resistance
Rest as creative incubation, not laziness
What grows in the fallow time
Rituals and rhythms that sustain us when productivity culture can't
The passages that challenged or comforted you
This is an invitation to winter with us, not as something to endure, but as a season with its own necessary gifts.