2023 Summer Workshops
This workshop is part of SOCIAL JUSTICE WEEK
It is easy, in these terrifying times to find oneself asking the question, do stories of my personal traumas and triumphs even matter anymore, and the answer is, a resounding yes. In this generative class we will use the tools of prose craft (point of view, dialogue, structure and form) to get our stories started. Then we will investigate how each beginning intersects with the values the current administration is destroying: clean air and water, climate catastrophe response, LGBTQIA+ rights, feminism, the fact that immigrants make our country great. We will talk about leaning into the political nature of our work in whatever genre we are working. We will talk about all the things it might mean to help.
Biography
Pam Houston is the author of seven books of fiction and nonfiction, all published by W.W. Norton, including Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country, Cowboys Are My Weakness, and Airmail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics and Place, coauthored with Amy Irvine. She teaches in the low residency MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts and at UC Davis, and is the co-founder and artistic director of the literary nonprofit, Writing By Writers. She lives in Colorado near the headwaters of the Rio Grande.