Witch Lit
Fall 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
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All art is magic. – Aleister Crowley
In this 4-week course leading into and following Halloween, you will learn how to transform your pen into a wand and make magic on the page.
In the first half of the class we will discuss a short story and poetry about or by a witchy writer. Writers may include Kelly Link, Audre Lorde, Sandra Cisneros, Joy Harjo, Helen Oyeyemi, Shirley Jackson, Yumiko Kurahashi, and Leonora Carrington, among others.
In the second half of class, students will share their work and receive feedback in a supportive community. Classes may also include writing prompts sparked by ritual or Tarot.
Writing the Weird:
4 Weeks, 4 Uncanny Creations
Fall 2023
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Winter 2024 at Writing Workshops
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Angels, ghosts, beasts, and monsters oh my! This is the shorter, themed, generative writing version (versus workshop) of Writing the Strange.
Writing Flash and Poetry
Spring 2023
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In this six week workshop, we will read and write the short form. We will examine popular non-fiction forms such as the hermit crab, epistolary, and lyric essay. We will also read flash fiction and poetry with all of our senses attuned to defamiliarization, whether that be surrealism, magical realism, the uncanny, or the fantastic.
Shapeshift Your Writing:
Using Form to Transform
Fall 2022
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In this creative writing workshop, we will mine six forms across genres for inspiration and explore why readers love them. Whether you’re generating your first draft or revising your tenth, experimenting with form can transform your writing. Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode, and Jerome Stern’s Making Shapely Fiction will be our touchstones.
Writing the Strange:
6 Weeks, 6 Senses
Spring 2022, Spring 2024
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In this creative writing workshop, we will address two common pitfalls: abstraction and cliches. Using Mary Karr’s essay Sacred Carnality as a touchstone, students will alchemize abstraction by writing through the lens of one of the five senses each week: sight, smell, touch, sound, and taste. Then, we’ll level up by making those descriptions strange, transforming clichés into fresh and striking language. By defamiliarizing the five senses, students will evoke what some call the Sixth Sense: that intuitive feeling about the mood, atmosphere, psychology, or emotion of a person or place. We'll invoke the weird and wonderful, magical, fantastic, uncanny, surreal, and even the supernatural.
Writing Ghosts:
Fall 2021
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“Nature is a haunted house--but Art--is a house that tries to be haunted.” - Emily Dickinson
What haunts you? In this class, we will explore ghosts as memory, both personal and cultural, and ghosts as metaphors for trauma. Ghosts can manifest as what the patriarchy calls "madness" as in Charlotte Perkin Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, desire as in Vernon Lee's works, or even joy as in Tori Amos' Happy Phantom. Anything goes with a ghost, which potentially makes them the ultimate muse.