Writing From Found Objects class at GrubStreet!

Have you been stuck in a creative rut? Are you looking for a low commitment but super fun writing class? Have no plans for this Friday, March 23rd, from 10:30am-1:30pm? Perfect! Sign up for my class Writing From Found Objects at GrubStreet! This one-time, three-hour session is guaranteed to get you back into a writing flow. Plus, you get to look through my collection of old photographs from Russian flea markets. What more could you want?!

Here’s the course description:

Have you ever found an old photograph at a flea market and wondered: who are these people, and what is their story? That’s how Ransom Riggs wrote Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, structuring the plotline entirely around found photographs. Have you ever looked at a page of an old book and thought: is there is a poem in here somewhere? That’s how Tom Phillip’s created A Humument, making beautiful paintings and found poems out of each page of an unknown Victorian novel he stumbled on one day. Using these two texts as our models, this course will be all about looking for inspiration for your writing in the objects that surround you, creating narratives out of things that already exist. We will look at an array of items––old photographs, video footage, antique maps, even junk and trash––and find the stories and poems hidden within. You’re welcome to bring in your own items, but objects will be provided––you just need to find their story. We may even take a trip to the antiques store next to GrubStreet for inspiration! This course will also explore the relationship between images and words, which makes it a great course for those who are visual artists in addition to writers. This will be a generative class, and hopefully you will leave the session feeling inspired and with the beginnings of several new pieces of work!

Sign up here!