Creative Writing Master Classes: Fall 2022

251 West Iowa Avenue,Iowa City IA 52242

05 November, 2022

Description

CREATIVE WRITING MASTER CLASSESFree, One-Shot, 2-Hour Classes Open to Everyone! Presented by: The Nonfiction Writing Program Reserve your spot! Register for classes at https://nwpmasterclassesfall2022.eventbrite.com *** Morning Sessions: Nonlinear Nonfiction: A Science Experiment in Form! Saturday, Nov 5, 10:00am-12:00pm, 403 EPB How do you write about something that has no clear beginning or end? What if your subject matter is ongoing or science-heavy and can’t be boxed into the standard narrative arc? In this course, we will be experimenting with form as a means of shaping the immutable, formless truths of our lives – our fears, our pains, and our obsessions. From playing an essay like a chess game to borrowing entries from a flight manual, we will discuss and try out the possibilities of shaping lived experience through experiments in form. INSTRUCTORS: Rebecca Flowers and Martha Strawbridge write nonfiction, love all things weird, and are proud aficionados in all things Lindsay Lohan. *** Writing Disability Narratives Saturday, Nov 5, 10:00am-12:00pm, 442 EPB The stories of disabled people are often erased and ignored, and even when disabled perspectives are told, many fall into overdone tropes and stereotypes. By examining and questioning different definitions of Disability, we will explore the idea of how disability can both take and give the disabled power. Writing Disabled Narratives will attempt to push past the clichés of victimhood and adversity to explore the humanity of disabled lives. INSTRUCTORS: Aaron Pang is just a guy with a cane telling stories to anyone who will listen. Connie Chen writes and unwrites the ways lupus has written her. ***  Looking In the Mirror: Creating a Map to the HeartSaturday, Nov 5, 10:00am-12:00pm, 331 EPB Looking In the Mirror: Creating a Map to the Heart. This masterclass supports writers to investigate your emotional interiors and connect with your inner self on a deeper level. Using Dr. Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart as a guide, writers will embark on a two hour journey through writing to reflect on your relationship to yourselves. Writers will leave the class with a better understanding on how to detail your emotional realities using sensory descriptions, memory work, and mind mapping techniques. INSTRUCTORS: Fi Okupe is a writer from Lagos, Nigeria and an Iowa Arts Fellow in the first year of the Nonfiction MFA with a keen interest in the interior emotional landscape and its effect on ourselves and our relationships. Grace Morse is a first year MFA student from New Orleans in the Nonfiction Writing Program. She is interested in exploring the multiplicity of ways that people understand memory and the self. *** Afternoon Sessions: Rewilding Iowa City: Writing with the Suburban Natural WorldSaturday, Nov 5, 1:00-3:00pm, 442 EPB Rewilding Iowa City: Writing with the Suburban Natural World. “Nature writing” often conjures images of grandiose elsewheres—sky-puncturing mountains, sublime glaciers, and lush jungles—and Iowa City’s landscape is just as worthy of a muse. In this master class, we’ll look at several examples of suburban nature writing that expertly blends the human with the nonhuman through the lenses of contemporary “new nature writing” techniques and the art of noticing. Students will leave with the seed of new essay from an in-class writing exercise and a deepened sense of connection with the wilds surrounding them. INSTRUCTOR: Stephanie Krzywonos’s debut book about the living world, ICE FOLX: AN ANTARCTIC MEMOIR, is forthcoming in 2025 ***  Alternate Universes: The Art of Speculation in Nonfiction WritingSaturday, Nov 5, 1:00-3:00pm, 403 EPB What do things like time travel, alternative universes, and radical sci-fi visions of the future have to do with nonfiction writing? Well, actually everything, maybe. In this master class, we will explore the role of speculation (‘the forming of a theory or conjecture without firm evidence’) and imagination in writing truths that are complicated, unstable, or unknowable. How can nonfiction writers pursue the possible over the actual, the ambiguous over the certain, the intangible over the factual? Students will leave the class with an understanding of speculation’s role in nonfiction and the beginnings of their own wild work of speculative nonfiction. After all, if the universe is infinite, there’s no such thing as fiction. INSTRUCTORS: Larson Fritz is an MFA candidate at the University of Iowa. Sarah Khatry is also an MFA candidate at the University of Iowa and an editor at Guernica magazine. *** Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa–sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Corey Campbell in advance at [email protected].