Mind Fuck: A Seminar on Writing Better Sex with Melissa Febos

WHEN: Saturday, March 27th, 2021 :: 1PM—3PM Pacific

WHERE: ZOOM! (But of course.) Meeting ID will be provided ahead of time.

HOW MUCH: $100. Payment plans are available, please contact Daniel Elder at registration@corporealwriting.com

SCHOLARSHIPS: Scholarships are always available. Click here to apply.

Mind Fuck: A Seminar on Writing Better Sex

Desire drives any story worth telling. One of the most notoriously difficult forms of desire to write is the sexual. As Audre Lorde wrote, “The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation.” To write scenes that remove sex from patriarchal structures means to (re)place them in the context of their inhabiting corporeal bodies and realities, to engage topics of identity, gender, family, politics, history, and, yes, the nature of love and longing. That is, writing about sex and sexuality is an exploration of our humanity. It is a craft issue. It is a radical and necessary practice for the writer interested in changing their world. In this two-hour seminar, we will practice changing our world and our minds by reading and writing about fucking.

This two-hour seminar will provide a combination of lecture, discussion, generative exercises, and close-readings of texts. There will be opportunities for sharing, but this is not a workshop and no feedback will be given.

Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir, Whip Smart (St. Martin’s Press 2010), and the essay collection, Abandon Me (Bloomsbury 2017), which was a LAMBDA Literary Award finalist, a Publishing Triangle Award finalist, an Indie Next Pick, and was widely named a Best Book of 2017. Her third book, Girlhood, an illustrated essay collection, is forthcoming on March 30, 2021 from Bloomsbury. A craft book, Body Work, is forthcoming in 2022 from Catapult. In 2018, Febos was the recipient of the Jeanne Córdova Nonfiction Award from LAMBDA Literary and the Sarah Verdone Writing Award from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She has been awarded other prizes and fellowships from MacDowell, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, The Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation, The BAU Institute at the Camargo Foundation, Ragdale, Prairie Schooner, and others. Her essays have recently appeared in Tin House, Granta, The Paris Review, The Sun, McSweeney’s, The Believer, and The New York Times. She is an associate professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program.

[Register Here]