Upcoming Kundiman Events:
The Etc.: Writing Across Obsession and Other Fields
with Muriel Leung
June 8th–July 27th
Tuesdays, 8:00 PM–10:30 PM ET
“I love hybridized forms for what it permits in conversation, how genre has always been an unstable category […] I think if we all encourage ourselves to be open to the different possibilities of working in other forms and genres, we can really understand the biases of our own aesthetic bends and actively work to challenge that, to engage with the less familiar, to be less fearful of it in the hopes that we relinquish some of the power and proprietary over the things we do have mastery in.”
–– Muriel Leung, Underblong: “Interview by Chen Chen”
Every great writer has a subject or field that they constantly return to, and these points of obsession make the writing come alive for the fortunate reader.
In this 8-week multi-genre workshop, writers will be encouraged to draw from their areas of knowledge or expertise—law, medical science, psychology, critical race studies, trans studies, music, visual art—to create original essays, poems, or work in other hybrid forms. This workshop is ideal for writers of all levels who possess a deep interest in another subject outside of creative writing and who want to learn how to organically weave their areas of knowledge into their writing. Writers will experiment with different formal techniques such as braiding, erasure, and repetition to forge a more intimate connection between their subjects and their writing.
Reading List:
Reading literature is just as important as writing it. The following reading list accompanies exercises that will help writers gain skills and strategies for approaching their own writing. While we will not read the complete works listed below (only excerpts), writers are encouraged to pursue further reading of these texts on their own.
Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings
Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother
Bhanu Kapil, Humanimal
Melissa Febos, “Call My Name” (essay)
Claudia Rankine, Citizen
Julietta Singh, No Archive Will Restore You
Jenny Boully, The Body: An Essay
Lara Mimosa Montes, Thresholes
Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House
Matthew Salesses’ “Revisions Round-Up” (quotations round-up)
eligibility:
This workshop is open to all writers of color, and students must be able to attend all 8 sessions of the workshop. The non-refundable tuition fee is $495. This workshop will be limited to 12 participants and will be held over Zoom. There is one scholarship spot available, and the application is open through Tuesday, May 18th.
Registration for this class is now closed.
FACULTY:
Muriel Leung is the author of Imagine Us, The Swarm, forthcoming from Nightboat Books in 2021, and Bone Confetti, winner of the 2015 Noemi Press Book Award. A Pushcart Prize nominated writer, her writing can be found in The Baffler, Cream City Review, Gulf Coast, The Collagist, Fairy Tale Review, and others.
She is a recipient of fellowships to Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop and the Community of Writers. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Gold Line Press and the Poetry Co-Editor of Apogee Journal. She also co-hosts The Blood-Jet Writing Hour Podcast with Rachelle Cruz and MT Vallarta. She is a member of Miresa Collective, a feminist speakers bureau.
Currently, she is an Andrew W. Mellon Humanities in a Digital World fellow at the University of Southern California where she is completing her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature. She is from Queens, NY.