A 1-Day Multigenre Writing Workshop
Wednesday, April 1, 6-8 PM
“Change, personal and political, does not come about in a day, nor a year. But it is our day-to-day decisions, the way in which we testify with our lives to those things in which we say we believe, that empower us. Your power is relative, but it is real. And if you do not learn to use it, it will be used, against you, and me, and our children. Change did not begin with you, and it will not end with you, but what you do with your life is an absolutely vital piece of that chain.”
– Audre Lorde, from a 1989 speech at Oberlin College
What can we do in our day-to-day to hone and wield our voices, to roll out the changes we believe our communities need? Writing can be applied to many things – protest signs, letters to senators and representatives, op-eds, poems, resistance song lyrics, flyers and t-shirts, podcasts and speeches, and testimonials at town and city halls. Join a legacy of resistance taking cues from the brilliant voices ahead of us: Bayard Rustin, Marina Tsvetaeva, Pablo Neruda, Angela Davis, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Paul Robeson, MLK Jr., Liu Xiaobo, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and more.
Each week, an accomplished writing instructor will bring their own expertise, resources, generative prompts, and guidance. This week features author, essayist, and poet Hannah Matthews.
Maybe the idea of a "writing practice"--let alone the idea of researching, writing, revising, and submitting--feels like too big of an undertaking right now. Maybe the subject and themes kicking around in your head feel too vulnerable, too personal, too complex, or too potentially polarizing or harmful to your readers if mishandled or under-thought. Maybe you are afraid of being misread, mischaracterized, or misunderstood. Maybe shame is holding you back, or a lack of confidence in your own skill or ability. Maybe it feels impossible to carve out time for creative work or solitude, when urgently-needed community care and mutual aid efforts are the central focus of any "free time" you may have, these days. Maybe work, parenting, health issues, interpersonal relationships, and organizing have felt too all-consuming, and your energy and attention span feel stretched beyond capacity. Maybe your phone has wholly swallowed your ability to focus, in the few and far-between moments you have to write at all.
Many people have ideas, or even plans, for a piece of writing--but when they sit down and open a blank word document (or flip to a new journal page, or unroll an empty canvas), the scope or the stakes of the project feel too daunting to even approach. In a season of our society that finds the vast majority of us burnt out, exhausted, traumatized, and also keenly aware of our relative safety, comfort, and privilege when we take in the scale of human suffering that is--by design--overwhelming to our nervous systems and our hearts, as we plug into the work of preventing and mitigating it (and into the ongoing, lifelong labor of destroying the systems that inflict it).
Many gifted writers are struggling, in this moment, to get their thoughts, emotions, and ideas out of their body and onto the page. But no beautiful finished piece of writing can exist without its predecessors--draft upon messy, imperfect, chaotic-feeling draft. In this generative workshop, you will arrive with a desire to write, and leave with the good solid bones of a first draft, outline, or an opening paragraph/page.
As we take in the words, ideas, images, abstract concepts, and big questions of being a human being in this place, in this moment, on this planet--we also need to be moving these things through and out of our bodies. We need to create more than we consume. And in order to create--whether we have a book inside of us, or a love letter, or a poem, or an OpEd/--we need to take that first baby step forward. We must tackle that white blank page, and begin.
$40 Members/$65 Nonmembers
Hannah Matthews is the author of the critically acclaimed genre-bending book of history and memoir The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna (Liveright, 2019) as well as the award-winning memoir Poor Your Soul (Soho Press 2016). Her work has been published in New York Magazine, Guernica, Down East, Tin House, LitHub, NPR, and more. Formerly an instructor at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, Ptacin lives on Peaks Island with her family and is at work on her third book of nonfiction.
ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED
All MWPA workshops require advanced registration. We accept registration by phone, mail, and online via our website. We cannot guarantee registration in the final 24-hours before a workshop, and can rarely accommodate day-of registration.
PAYMENT & CANCELLATION POLICIES
If you need to withdraw from a class after registering for any reason, please email or call the MWPA immediately. You may be eligible for a partial refund or credit, depending on how far in advance you cancel. → MORE INFORMATION
QUESTIONS
For any questions regarding this workshop, please contact programs@mainewriters.org.
REGISTER BY PHONE
Call 207-200-7180 and register with your VISA or MasterCard.
REGISTER BY MAIL
If you prefer to pay by mail, please print this registration form (downloadable PDF) and mail it to the MWPA with a check or credit card information.
SCHOLARSHIP
The MWPA is proud to offer one partial scholarship to this workshop for members-only. Scholarships are awarded on a combination of need and merit. Application Due two weeks prior to the workshop start date, at 9:00 a.m.
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MWPA WORKSHOP POLICIES
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