Nightswimming :: A 4-week generative lab w/ Lidia Yuknavitch and the Corporeal Squad — begins July 27th

Nightswimming :: A 4-week generative lab w/ Lidia Yuknavitch and the Corporeal Squad — begins July 27th

Nightswimming is a four-week generative lab offering a plunge into narrativity with the Corporeal Squad. Think of it as skinny dipping under the moon, only the water is your imagination and language. Each one-hour session will feature Lidia Yuknavitch in conversation with a member of the squad—Domi Shoemaker, Daniel Isaiah Elder, Katie Guinn, and Anya Pearson—and will include portals we can all write into together. You can sign up for individual sessions, or sign up for the whole bundle at a discount.

Week One (7/27) — Domi Shoemaker :: Queer Up — Ever wonder how to mess with language just right, and make your ideas truly reflect what you are trying to say? Come play with us and let Domi guide you through a portal and a generative revision exercise to queer up your work!

Week Two (8/3) — Daniel Isaiah Elder ::  Nesting Dolls — Finding patterns can help us unravel the stories in our lives, our families, our histories. Through a series of writing portals, we’ll create nesting dolls together, tracking images/metaphors/moments through generations of family—whether chosen or born—resulting in mini essays that may stand on their own or may be the seeds of bigger projects yet to come.

Week Three (8/10) — Anya Pearson :: Let’s Give ‘Em Something to Talk About — What can TV/film/theater teach us about writing good dialogue? Through a series of examples and portals, we’ll pull apart what makes dialogue effective/moving/juicy/authentic and what it can do to multiply the layers of meaning for your characters. As a multi-hyphenate (playwright, screenwriter, poet, performer, activist) Anya will focus on the ripples of potential meaning that happen when we pull from other forms/types of writing.

Week Four (8/17) — Katie Guinn :: Cross-Pollinating — In nature, blueberries can survive on their own as individual plants, however, they produce more prolific blooms-to-berries if there are at least two varieties that the bees can cross-pollinate. This allows for expansion of their creations because they embody characteristics of both varieties. Katie will focus on what it’s like to be an artist working in multiple fields and how that helps her as a writer overall, alongside portals to help explore this.

WHEN: Four Wednesdays beginning July 27th, 4-5pm PST (July 27th, August 3rd, August 10th, August 17th)

WHERE: ZOOM. Meeting ID will be provided ahead of time. Meetings will be recorded.

HOW MUCH: $99/session or $350 for a bundle of all four. Payment plans are available, contact Daniel Elder at registration@corporealwriting.com

Lidia Yuknavitch is the nationally bestselling author of the novels Thrust, The Book of Joan, The Small Backs of Children, and Dora: A Headcase, and of the memoir The Chronology of Water. Her book The Misfit’s Manifesto is based on her TED Talk “On The Beauty of Being a Misfit,” now with over 4 million views. She is the recipient of two Oregon Book Awards and has been a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize and the PEN Center USA Creative Nonfiction Award. She is the founder of Corporeal Writing, and lives in Oregon near the sea. She is a very good swimmer.

Domi Shoemaker Domi Shoemaker helped start Corporeal Writing, where they now write, manage space, and lead creative labs (virtually at the moment), in Portland, OR. Domi holds an MFA from Pacific University, where they also judge writing contests and edit for for Pacific’s Silk Road Journal. Domi has published with platforms such as [PANK] and Nailed Magazines, and they can be found in print with Forest Avenue Press, and in Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Misfit’s Manifesto. Domi has a love for autobiographical fiction, hybrid works and mixed media audio visual forms. You can reach them at domi@corporealwriting.com.

Daniel Isaiah Elder is a writer and editor based in Portland, Oregon. He is a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellow, and serves as Navigator for Lidia Yuknavitch’s Corporeal Writing. His essays appear in Catapult, The Rumpus, Pidgeonholes, Gertrude Press, Vol. 1 Brooklyn and many more. His fiction appears in Newtown Literary, Maudlin House, BULL, and Ghost City Review. His debut memoir is looking for a home. He lives with his cat, Terence, who writes most of his tweets. Find those at @tumblehawk.

Anya Pearson is an award-winning playwright, poet, producer, actress, and activist. On staff at Corporeal Writing, she is a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. Anya is currently finishing her debut collection of poetry, writing three pilots, four plays, a novel, and constantly plotting, planning, devising, creating, imagining, and revising visions of a better, more just world. Her plays include: The Measure of Innocence (The Kilroys’ List, Drammy Award for Best Original Script, Finalist: Oregon Book Award for Drama), Made to Dance in Burning Buildings (Showcase: Joe’s Pub, NYC; Shaking the Tree, Portland, OR), The Killing Fields (2018 Orphic Commission; Seven Devils; GPTC; VTC), Butterflies Eat Decay (Go Play Outside), and Three Love Songs (Play at Home initiative, Portland Center Stage). Memberships: Linestorm Playwrights, Dramatists Guild, Actors’ Equity Association. anyapearson.com

Katie Guinn is a multi-focused visual artist and writer. She has been published in Call Me [Brackets], Pacific Stone Zine, The Rumpus, Nailed Magazine, Entropy, and others. Her adult coloring book, The Stoner Babes was published in 2018 by Microcosm Publishing, which recently went into its third printing. She dares you to find typos as she edited that herself. She also spent time as a contributing writer for The Portland Mercury. She holds an undergraduate degree in Apparel Design and Fashion History from The Art Institute of Portland. She leads and co-facilitates creative writing and visual art labs here at Corporeal Writing.