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Classes & Seminars

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Delve Readers Seminar: James Baldwin

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Explore James Baldwin’s first two novels – Go Tell It on the Mountain and Giovanni’s Room – and some of his early essays in order to deepen your understanding of the intersection of identity, morality, and power. What do these early works teach about Baldwin’s response to his own question: what does it mean to be an honest person and a good writer? September 1 - October 6, 2021 Wednesdays, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. (six sessions) online via Zoom Guide: Nicholas Buccola Nicholas Buccola is the author of The Fire Is Upon Us,The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass and the editor of The Essential Douglass and Abraham Lincoln and Liberal Democracy. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, and many other publications. He is the Elizabeth and Morris Glicksman…

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$240

The Path of Perseverance: Writing No Matter What

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

The writing journey, exhilarating and wondrous as it is, can be punctuated with delays and disappointments. Sometimes the demands of daily life or an unexpected crisis can send us into a tailspin. How do we keep writing through chaos or a stressful live event? For many of us, the last year threw various hurdles in the way of our ability to write consistently. Yet, we pressed on. Still, some of us have yet to regain our footing, and need encouragement to keep going. If you are tired of not writing, and want to cultivate the “stick-to-it-ness” necessary for meeting your goals–no matter the challenges–this workshop is for you. Gleaning inspiration and guidance from writers like Annie Dillard, Julia Cameron, and Rumi, along with mining the…

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$190

Refuse the Given World: Breaking Blocks Through Play

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

“When I sit down and start writing, I feel the given world recede, and I can just play.” —Sam Lipsyte Remember when you were a little kid, playing on the floor for hours and hours? Our best writing days are often imbued with that same sense of timelessness, freedom, wonder, and escape—in other words, our work often works best when it feels like play. In this generative writing course, we will tap into a playful mindset—by using silly rules, obstructions, oblique strategies, games, dreams, ephemera, constraints, and more—to unlock problematic works and/or generate new material. You will leave this class with more than a dozen techniques for starting a new project, breaking a block, or working through something sticky in a piece of writing. This…

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$290

Premise Course: Why do we resist the commonness of humanity? Morrison’s Beloved and Bluest Eye

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Why do we resist the commonness of humanity? Morrison's Beloved and Bluest Eye (Learn about Premise classes here: https://www.premiseinstitute.com/premisefaq) In The Origin of Others, Toni Morrison wrote, “For the stranger is not foreign, she is random; not alien but remembered; and it is the randomness of the encounter with our already known—although unacknowledged—selves that summons a ripple of alarm. That makes us reject the figure…makes us want to own, govern, and administrate the Other. We deny her personhood.” Within Morrison’s novels, audiences are given front row seats to the exploration of a phenomenon she believed needed examined via language, images, and experiences. In this course, we will read and discuss “othering” as presented in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Beloved. Is “othering” as inherent a…

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$150

Writing with our Ancestors, with Chelsea Hicks

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

WHAT: A four-week generative online writing lab. WHEN: Begins Friday, September 10th, 2021. This class is hosted on our rich interactive online platform, WetInk. The class is broken into four weeks, and within those weeks you go at your own pace. In addition, Chelsea will host five weekly Zoom session on Fridays from 4-5pm PST. The final Zoom session will be a group reading/celebration. (Zoom dates: 9/10, 9/17, 9/24, 10/1, 10/8) ACCESS: While able to be purchased directly from this site at our standard rate of $350, this offering is available at a sliding scale rate to anyone who inquires. Please reach out to Daniel Elder at registration@corporealwriting.com. Payment plans are also available. In Chiapas and Oaxaca, writers center Indigenous literature with translation across languages,…

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$350

Writing the Intersection of Our Identities: Tuesday nights

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Through autobiographical writing about our identities—including race, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and class—we’ll explore where we hold power and privilege and where we have experienced marginalization and oppression. In addition to experimenting with craft techniques such as audience, point of view, research, dialogue, and figurative language, we’ll also discuss how to use our writing in service of reflection, healing, truth-telling, and culture change. By the end of the course, I hope you’ll emerge with several drafts, and that we’ll each emerge with a deeper understanding of what it means to have lived in our individual bodies. Access Program We want our Delves and writing classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some…

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$240

Premise Course: How do we carry borders with us even as we cross them? Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, Luiselli’s Tell Me How it Ends, Castillo’s The Mixquiahuala Letters

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Beautiful question: How do we carry borders with us even as we cross them? (Learn about Premise classes here: https://www.premiseinstitute.com/premisefaq) Texts: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera; Ana Castillo’s The Mixquiahuala Letters, and Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How it Ends Since its conception in 1848, the US-Mexico border has been a site of conflict, contradiction, and beauty. Although the border continues to feature heavily in our news and politics, it is often described through narratives of violence, national security, and human rights abuses.  In this course, we will delve into works that complicate these narratives by embracing the beauty and possibility of the borderlands. We will begin with Gloria Anzaldúa’s landmark work Borderlands/La Frontera, in which she describes the border as “una herida abierta,” an open wound,…

Continue readingPremise Course: How do we carry borders with us even as we cross them? Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, Luiselli’s Tell Me How it Ends, Castillo’s The Mixquiahuala Letters
$200

Writing the Intersections of Our Identities: For BIPOC writers

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Through autobiographical writing about our identities—including race, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and class—we’ll explore where we hold power and privilege and where we have experienced marginalization and oppression. In addition to experimenting with craft techniques such as audience, point of view, research, dialogue, and figurative language, we’ll also discuss how to use our writing in service of reflection, healing, truth-telling, and culture change. By the end of the course, I hope you’ll emerge with several drafts, and that we’ll each emerge with a deeper understanding of what it means to have lived in our individual bodies. Please note there is also a section of this class that is open to all. This section is for BIPOC participants only. Access Program We want our Delves and writing…

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$240

Build Your Own Publicity Plan

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Many authors shy away from self-promotion, but a strong public persona and publicity plan is one of the best investments you can make in your forthcoming book. This class takes the guesswork out of promotion and guides you to develop a sustainable plan, wherever you are in the publication process. We’ll cover timelines, target markets, tools, and industry expectations, as well as how to collaborate with your press, and when (or whether) to hire an outside publicist. Access Program We want our writing classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class registrations at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60%…

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$195

Nine-Month Novel Intensive

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This course for dedicated writers is designed to guide you through the writing and/or revising of your novel. It runs from September through May. You’ll read excerpts from published novels by authors including Han Kang, Tommy Orange, Lina Meruane, Mitchell S. Jackson, Deborah Levy, and Susan Steinberg, as well as craft essays by authors including Dorothy Allison, Jane Alison, and Alexander Chee. Some weeks you’ll have craft assignments to complete outside of class, and other weeks we’ll do in-class exercises together. After the first month of meetings, two students will workshop each week. Each student will have the opportunity to workshop five times, turning in up to 25 double-spaced pages per submission. Students should be prepared to read and comment on up to 50 pages…

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$1450
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