Class Description

Craving fresh approaches and ways to radically bust open your writing process? In this class, we’ll explore unusual structures by borrowing from the “real world”—in other words, preexisting “hermit crab” shells to plug our creative words into. Such pieces on the page can take the look and form of letters, instructions, recipes, medical notes, social media posts, obituaries, interviews, and so much more. Each week, we’ll read and discuss examples of this in action across fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid work. We’ll see how these seemingly “real world” containers can have unique, fun, and poignant effects on both the writing and reading experience, and try our hand at them with in-class and at-home generative exercises. During most classes, we’ll informally share our work and ideas, culminating in at least one formal workshop for each participant. Participants will come away with a slew of new craft tools, at least four short drafts, and inspiration for future writing. *This is a generative class for all genres, with approximately 1-3 hours of reading and writing at home per week, with 3 short readings to be completed before our first class meeting. INSTRUCTOR CAROLYN ZAIKOWSKI is the author of two hybrid novels In Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse (Civil Coping Mechanisms Press) and A Child Is Being Killed (Aqueous Books, 2013). Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared widely in The Washington Post, Denver Quarterly, The Rumpus, PANK, West Branch, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and is currently an English professor and volunteer death doula.