RESHELVE ME
spring 2023 workshops
Seismic Shifts
Generative Zoom Workshop co-taught with Corinne Manning
Sunday, January 8, 3-5pm PST | Sliding Scale | REGISTER HERE
Description
The earth erodes and changes very slowly, until it doesn’t. Floods, tectonic upheavals, eruptions and more are all responsible for quick changes to the land that can result in new ecosystems, new sentences of life. Looking to geology as a role model, how can we emulate its dynamic rhythms in our writing? What does it take to allow our syntax to erode, implode, accrete and ultimately shape new ways of telling the stories we want to write? What does the earth know about a sentence that we’ve forgotten? In this generative workshop taught by Corinne Manning and Cal Angus, you’ll be guided through a series of writing prompts to explore techniques allowing a sentence, a story, and ultimately yourself to change. Ideal for writers feeling stuck in a style that doesn’t quite sound like themselves, and who are looking for a shake-up in that unending search for their own voice.
Publishing Trans Stories
Short Fiction Workshop In-person
Sundays, Feb 19 - March 19, 1-3pm PST at the Independent Publishing Resource Center
Description
This is a workshop for trans and nonbinary writers who want to be publishing their own short stories in literary journals. In this workshop, students will take one short story through the full submission cycle: workshop and revise based on instructor and peer feedback; research literary journals and other venues for publication; learn how to write a cover letter and submit work for publication. Stories do not need to be about trans-related subject matter, and all styles and genres are welcome. Writers will leave with a better understanding of how to work with edits, an introduction to the trans writers and editors working in Portland, and how to engage critically and meaningfully with publishers both locally and beyond.
Container Work
spring 2023 workshop pods
Container 1: Mondays, 6-8pm, Jan 23 - Feb 20
Container 2: Thursdays, 4-6pm, Jan 26 - Feb 23
Description
Container Work aims to bring awareness to the different containers you might seek out for your yourself and your writing, how to organize and maintain them, and how to recognize when a container is no longer serving you. You will be asked to talk about your stories, your projects, and your self, sometimes interchangeably under the very real illusion that all three are necessary for art. As a group we'll gain clarity over why we write, what we write about, and why others should care about our work.
Each pod will consist of 3-5 writers maximum, and all writers will be asked to talk about their inspiration and influences, their disappointments and false starts, and to share portions of their project. Group discussion, one-on-one sessions, and Zoom Q&As with writers, editors, and artists will provide different frameworks for thinking about your work in the world, prompts and occasions for reflection, as well as a small audience in which to explore what achieving your publishing goals might look like. As such, Container Work is best suited for those who have some sense of the final shape of the project you are working on. You might have a few weird stories written, most of a draft of a slippery novel, a messy experimental nonfiction manuscript etc. Maybe you’re having a hard time revising; maybe you’re feeling lost at the prospect of finding an agent or where to go to publish your work. Together we’ll explore the various containers that might ferry our work to an audience, what their pros and cons might be, how a container shapes the work inside of it and vice versa.
My hope is that you’ll emerge from this workshop feeling less alone, with a calmer head, and the agency to find and shape containers that will work for you, instead of ones that seek to use you & your work solely for their own profit.
*sigh*ence class // science class
spring 2023
Wednesdays, 6-8pm, March 15 - April 19 (no class March 29)
Description
In this generative class we'll experiment with experience, play with what we can take from biology, geology, -ologies in general, and approach our own investigations in prose, in syntax, with as much (or more) curiosity as scientists do a cell or taxonomy. I see science, in its Western configuration, as a failed endeavor-- a commitment to fact and data that left feeling behind in an attempt to conquer and colonize with Knowledge. We'll try to reclaim and embody feeling in our work and in the way we move through the world. In *sigh*ence, we're not interested in peer review or critique, nor in the writer as data collector; this will be a generative workshop built around communal inquiry. I will provide a reading list, prompts & 'homework', a mix of writing assignments and exercises such as: 'go outside and find a piece of lichen. how many worlds can you find inside of it?'
Deposits
A deposit is required to hold your space.
Deposits are not refundable, but I will apply them to a future class if you can't attend the series you signed up for. In other words, be sure you're ready to do this before paying me $$$.
After paying your deposit above, I will send you a confirmation email and a receipt. You can pay your balance here via PayPal or Venmo.
I hope to be able to offer sliding scale options in the future; if you want to stay on top of what class offerings I have coming up, sign up for my newsletter here.