English
Professor Don Mitchell, lecturer in the English Department and Program in Film and Media Culture, just published his fourth novel, The Nature Notebooks, and is already working on his fifth. His specializations include workshop courses in Fiction and Screenwriting, classic and contemporary Environmental Literature, and Film Adaptation.
Before The Nature Notebooks, Mitchell had published three novels, Thumb Tripping (1970), Four-Stroke (1974), and The Souls of Lambs (1979). He also is the author of the three essay collections, Moving UpCountry (1984), Living UpCountry (1987), and Growing UpCountry (1991), as well as the travel guide, Vermont: A Compass American Guide (1999; revised 2nd ed. 2001). Mitchell’s short fiction has been published in Harper’s, Esquire, Atlantic, Shenandoah, and other periodicals. His essays and nonfiction articles have been published in Boston Magazine, Yankee, Vermont Life, Harper’s, Country Journal, and other periodicals.
Prof. Mitchell has written seven feature-length film scripts over a 30-year period. One has been produced as a film – his adaptation of his first novel, Thumb Tripping (Embassy Pictures) – but several of the others have either been purchased for development or optioned by interested producers.
Mitchell lives on a farm about eight miles from the Middlebury campus, where he has cared for a flock of 100 sheep for the past 25 years. Every April the ewes give birth to about 175 lambs, and during the three-week “lambing” season he uses his students in the ES/EL course Nature’s Meanings to take turns spending nights in the barn and seeing that the lambs are safely delivered. He received his B.A. from Swarthmore College.
Film & Media Studies
The Instructor
Don Mitchell teaches Screenwriting for the Film-Video Program at Middlebury College; each fall term, about 15 students take an introductory workshop in which they learn the basic conventions of telling a story for the film medium, and each spring term 10-12 students each write a feature length film-script (90-110 pages) in an intermediate-level workshop. Many Film-Video majors, having taken both these courses, elect to write an additional screenplay as an Independent Project.
Students in Mitchell's screenwriting workshops at Middlebury read a different feature-length script every week (usually in the form of a photocopy of the writer's original typewritten pages or computer printout), then view the film that emerged from the script and make close comparisons between "the writer's film" and the eventual product. A number of Middlebury screenwriters have gone on to do graduate work in writing for film before finding their way into the industry, and others have gone directly to entry-level positions in Hollywood that require a sophisticated understanding of how scripts work to create a shared vision among collaborators on a film project. Among recent graduates who, since leaving Middlebury, have earned production credits as Hollywood screenwriters are Robert Perez (40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS) and Michael Bender (NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE) and Dave Collard, with a Hollywood credit for OUT OF TIME.
Mitchell also teaches workshops in fiction and nonfiction for Middlebury College's English Department, and a survey course on American and British Nature Writing for the Program in Environmental Studies.
The Author
Don Mitchell is the author of three book-length works of fiction, three book-length essay collections (based on his "other" life as a sheep farmer in Vermont), approximately 200 magazine articles, and half a dozen feature-length screenplays. Of these scripts for motion pictures, three have been optioned to film producers, two were actually purchased for production and one, THUMB TRIPPING (1973), was ultimately produced by a Hollywood film company. His current project is a novel about eco-terrorism, THE NATURE NOTEBOOKS, which he has also adapted into a feature-length screenplay, NIGHT WORK. THE NATURE NOTEBOOKS will be published in April 2004.
Curriculum Vitae
Books
Growing Upcountry: Raising a Family & Flock in a Rural Place. Camden House, 1991.
Living Upcountry: A Pilgrim's Progress. Yankee Books, 1986.
Moving Upcountry: A Yankee Way of Knowledge. Yankee Books, 1984.
So You Want to Raise Sheep in Vermont, handbook. Vermont Sheep Breeders Association, 1982. Rev. edition, 1986.
The Souls of Lambs, a fable. Houghton Mifflin, 1979.
Four- Stroke, a novel. Little, Brown Co., 1974.
Thumb Tripping, a novel. Little, Brown Co., 1970. Also London: Jonathan Cape. Also in translation by publishers in Sweden and Japan.
Contributions to Anthologies
"Some Things We Do for Lamb." Vermont Odysseys. Eds. Lawrence Gilbert, Stephen Greene. Viking Press, 1991.
"Dancing with Nature." The Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Essays. Eds. Robert Pack and Parini. University Press of New England, 1989. Rpt. in Outlooks and Insights: A Reader for College Writers, 3rd edition. Eds. Paul Eschholz and Alfred Rosa. St. Martin's Press, 1991.
"Celeste, In Camera." Last Night's Stranger. Ed. Pat Rotter. A & W Publishers, 1982.
"Diesel." The Best American Short Stories of 1971. Eds. Martha Foley & David Burnett. Houghton Mifflin, 1971.
Feature-Length Screenplays
The Souls of Lambs. In development for Seven Hills Productions, 1991-92.
The Dream Weaver. 1990, unproduced.
A Perfect Birth. 1982, unproduced.
Thumb Tripping. Produced by Avco Embassy Pictures Corp., 1972.
Selected Short Fiction
"Celeste, In Camera." VIVA (August 1976).
"The Division of Christian Ed." S.H.Y. (Winter 1974).
"Killing Myself." Shenandoah (Winter 1972).
"Diesel." Shenandoah (Summer 1970).
"Mr. Vic." Esquire (June 1970).
"Thelma." Atlantic Monthly (June 1970).
"Alcohol Tripping." Harper's Magazine (Sept. 1969). Rpt. in trans. in Plexus (France, Dec. 1969).
Selected Articles & Essays
"This New England: The Jenne Farm." Yankee Magazine (August 1990).
"Trouble on Butternut Mountain." Yankee Magazine (March 1990).
"A Tale of Two Hovels." Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin (Winter 1989).
"Avian Angler." Vermont Life (Summer 1987).
Six articles about New England residential architecture. Yankee Homes (1987- 89).
"Opening Day." Vermont Life (Autumn 1986).
"Buying Time." Burlington Magazine (August 1986).
"The Hardest Working Man in Vermont." Yankee Magazine (Sept. 1985).
"Of Cash and Cows." Boston Magazine (Oct. 1983).
"Small Towns: Five Massachusetts Gems." Boston Magazine (Sept. 198l).
138 essays on rural life under heading "R.F.D." Boston Magazine (1979- 1991).
"Water Story." Country Gentlemen (Winter 1978).
"Advice for the First- Time Butcher." Country Journal (Nov. 1976).
Papers Delivered at Conferences
"Using the Macintosh Computer in Network-Based Writing Workshops." The Macintosh Computer in the University Curriculum. University of Vermont. April 1990.
"Congenial Clay." Keynote address. New England Young Writers' Conference. May 1988.
"Dancing With Nature." Panel discussion on Nature Writing, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. 1987.
Grants
Fellowship in Nonfiction Writing. Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. 1986.
Book- of- the- Month Club College Writing Fellowship. 1969.
Works in Progress
Drop Dead, Gorgeous, a novel.
The Year of the Cat, a novel.