Three-part online workshop for The Makery at the Hindman Settlement School. More info and registration link here.

Please direct any questions about the workshop to Hindman staff via their website.

Dates & Time & Cost

Saturdays — October 4, 11, and 18 —- 10:00am-12:00pm EST —- All Sessions meet virtually on Zoom —- $275

Description:

Appalachian and Southern writing is often deeply rooted in connection to place, and Indigenous writing is often deeply rooted in kinship with the land. In this class, we’ll explore land and place as main characters in fiction and creative nonfiction writing. We’ll dig into how place and land might be represented differently in writing based on our (and our characters’) identities and relationships to the land we live on. We’ll dig into questions including: How do descendents of settlers write about our relationship to land that our ancestors stole? How do we muddy the waters of our relationships to place through explorations of insider and outsiderness in Appalachia and beyond? How do histories and contemporary realities of migration make their way into our writing about place and land?

We’ll read excerpts (aloud together, and apart between classes) from novels, short stories, essays, and memoirs in which land and place are as central to the storyline as any humans are. Weekly prompts drawn from our readings will inspire new writing, which we’ll have opportunities to share with each other. We’ll also spend time discussing how land and place are showing up in our own writing practices, and generating ideas together about how to deepen our practices of writing about land and place.

We’ll read excerpts from writers including: Crystal Wilkinson, Jesmyn Ward, Louise Erdrich, Ocean Vuong, Randall Kenan, Dorothy Allison, Joshua Whitehead, Raquel Gutiérrez, Leslie Marmon Silko, and more.