Upcoming Kundiman Events:

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The Full Swoop:
On Distillation and Compression
with T Kira Madden

Saturday, May 29th
12:00 PM–3:00 PM ET

“In every class I teach, we read across genre. We dissect the structure of a poem and use it as a story model; we look at classic tragic and comic form and shape an essay around it. The writer’s toolbox is for everyone, because we all have the same job: to make the art and to make it true. We have to pull off the illusion.”
––T Kira Madden, Ploughshares: “‘The writer’s toolbox is for everyone’: An Interview with T Kira Madden” 

This seminar will focus on distillation and compression. When a “traditional” narrative arc does not feel possible, the artist’s job is to write into the corners, to find electricity in the simple acts of noticing, to create a satisfying set-up and payoff for readers. In this session, we will focus on structuring moments until a dramatic swoop takes shape, until there is a change of terms, a friction. We’ll close read poems and short prose together and examine the sonic engines and metaphorical properties at work. We’ll then use these tools for our own generative exercises.

eligibility:

This craft class is open to all writers of color. The non-refundable tuition fee is $50. This class will be held over Zoom. There are scholarship spots available, and applications are open through May 13th.

Registration for this class is now closed.

FACULTY:

T Kira Madden's Photo.jpg

T Kira Mahealani Madden is a writer, photographer, and amateur magician. A recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, Hedgebrook, Tin House, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo, she serves as the founding Editor-in-chief of No Tokens, a magazine of literature and art. Her fiction and nonfiction has been featured in Harper’s, New York Magazine, McSweeney’s, and others, and she is the author of the 2019 New York Times Editors’ Choice memoir, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls, which is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the LAMBDA Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir, and forthcoming as a feature film.