Grackle painting by Edison Cruz.
When Walt Whitman famously declared, “I contain multitudes,” part of what he was reveling in was the human capacity to be filled with endless facets and contradictions and avenues of exploration. Our hens and our wolfhounds reside in our memories, along with constellations of characters populating our lives, from our dearest friends to the kids who showed up to class exactly three times and then never again. Each of us is filled with multitudes of stories about growing up, finding and losing loves, losing and remaking ourselves, understanding too little or too much, too early or too late, sometimes just enough, just in time.
How we come to find the right form for these tales to take is as exciting as the stories themselves. In this class we’ll move from the intimate landscape of the personal narrative, to the intricate landscape of the braided essay, as we experiment with different ways to tell our own stories. We may discover that part of our personal multitudes cannot be confined to the expected form of the printed word, “12-point Times New Roman one-inch margins all around.”
In this workshop, you can expect to:
- read and discuss published works;
- write during class in response to prompts crafted from our readings and class themes;
- discuss your work and your classmates’;
- and consider both printed and audio media as avenues to share your stories with an audience.
Angélique Jamail is a Lebanese-American author whose work has appeared in over two dozen publications, including New Reader Magazine, Waxwing, Pluck, The Milk of Female Kindness––An Anthology of Honest Motherhood, Femmeliterate, Bayou City Magazine, and Literary Mama, and her poetry has been featured on the radio. Her books include Finis. and Homecoming (both fiction) and The Sharp Edges of Water (poetry). Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and has been a finalist for the New Letters Prize in Poetry. She began serving on the Board of Directors for Mutabilis Press in December 2019. She’s also the creator of the popular zine Sonic Chihuahua.