Up to 6 sessions >> Saturdays, June 16, 23, 30, July 14, 21, 28
(no session July 7 due to 4th of July holiday)
10am–1pm, Studio 16A, $60 per session or $295 if you enroll in all six classes
Class sessions are freestanding and also build upon each other. We encourage you to enroll in all six sessions to get the most out of your writing practice. However, you can enroll in any and all sessions that work with your schedule.
Writing thrives in fresh attention. How can we come to our process open, free of preconception, ready for anything? How do we nourish this capacity? Stock cinematic visions of the creative process suggest inspiration seizes us in sudden gusts or that it’s a lucky endowment. But what if inspiration, as the painter Agnes Martin suggests, is always there, and our access to it is a function of our receptivity? How can we be, as poet Stanley Kunitz puts it, “a friendly host?”
In this writing class, each session includes a focus on craft and process, ample time for generative exercises, close readings, and guided discussion of students’ work. Above all, we’ll delve into what may not yet be on the page, becoming alert to the living, breathing language we step over on our way to some idealized notion of writing. In training our attention and in tuning our listening, we’ll invite an inquiry into our own obstacles and habits and develop strategies for finding entry points, and sustaining a resilient writing practice.
The workshop cultivates an ethos of care and respect for each others’ risks and offerings, holding a space in which you can find camaraderie and perspective in your writing process. Readings will include Mark Doty, Maggie Nelson, Anne Carson, Terrance Hayes, Jane Hirshfield, Jen Bervin, Mark Epstein, Frances Richard, Olena Kalytiak Davis, Solmaz Sharif, Ross Gay, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Rebecca Solnit, Claudia Rankine, Mary Ruefle, and Ocean Vuong.
