2024 Summer Workshops
This workshop is part of the series WRITING QUEER LIVES
Queer and trans people have often found ourselves in the position of having to write ourselves into our own lives as well as writing our lives into literature—no wonder so many of us turn to fabulist writing to tell stories that don’t fit into conventional structures. In this craft-focused multi-genre workshop, we will play with imitation, adaptation, re-telling, queering, and ekphrasis. We’ll learn from examples of queer / trans fabulist writing, and through a series of generative exercises we’ll practice techniques for using myths from world traditions (as well as fairy tales and fables) in our own writing, perhaps as structural underpinning, perhaps as inspiration, perhaps in some other way. While there will be opportunities to share drafts and receive feedback, this is primarily a generative workshop.
Biography
Andrea Lawlor teaches writing at Mount Holyoke College, edits fiction for Fence magazine, and has been awarded fellowships by Lambda Literary and Radar Labs. Their writing has appeared in various literary journals including Ploughshares, the Millions, jubilat, and the Brooklyn Rail. Their publications include a chapbook, Position Papers (Factory Hollow Press, 2016), and a novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (Vintage, 2019), a finalist for the Lambda Literary and CLMP Firecracker Awards.