Family Stories

This creative writing workshop will explore the idea of family. We'll begin with our questions: How do we conceptualize the word family? How do family histories, stories, mythologies, and languages shape our narratives? What does family have to do with the construction of a self? How can we investigate the self and all of its many contexts in writing? We'll consider how we might work from our questions in order to craft work that is meaningful and revealing. Students will have the opportunity to write in both poetry and prose, as well as to develop their own creative cross-genre projects. Along the way, we'll discuss elements of craft essential to strong writing: how to turn the self into a speaker; how create the world of a piece through image, detail, and metaphor; how to craft beautiful sentences and lines; how to find a form; and many other topics.