Grackle image by artist Diane Bradley.
Joan Didion writes in On Keeping a Notebook, “I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be whether we find them attractive company or not.” In our digital age, it’s much too easy to edit, to falsify, to delete, or to ghost our former selves, but private journaling may not only keep us sane—it keeps us honest about ourselves, who we are now in light of what we chose never to forget. This hands-on workshop is all about journaling and revisiting our own writing. We’ll start by getting words on the page—quick notes, memories, or reflections—then explore fun ways to go back and revise those drafts so they tell an even deeper story (perhaps one we’d like to see published). Journaling ideas and revision strategies—borrowed from the likes of Sylvia Plath, Suleika Jaouad, Marie Howe, David Sedaris, Kiese Laymon and others—will be shared and discussed.
Justin Jannise is the author of How to Be Better by Being Worse (BOA Editions, 2021), which won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Recently a recipient of the Inprint Verlaine Prize in Poetry and a former Editor-in-Chief of Gulf Coast, Justin holds degrees from Yale University, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the University of Houston, and now teaches at Prairie View A&M University.
