Writing letters to ghosts with jennifer s. cheng

SATURDAY, october 7th
2:00–5:00 pm ET

As Asian American writers we contend with various kinds of ghosts and hauntings—ancestral, archival, racial, familial, migrational, geographical, linguistic, social, etc. Some are gentle, some are violent, but these hauntings are related to that which we cannot name and yet for which we reach, that which is present only in its absence, or that which feels shadowy, faraway, obscured, yet profoundly potent. How might the epistolary form invoke new fields of language or ways of relating to our ghosts, our projects, and our writing practices? How does the intimacy of personal address allow us to cross distances while also inhabiting those distances? In this class we will look closely at epistolary poems by writers such as Oliver de la Paz, Solmaz Sharif, Victoria Chang, giving special consideration to how they function as ghostly communications and spaces of conjuring, collaboration, and wilderness. We will also participate in guided writing experiments where we will write letters to our ghosts by way of prose poetry or lyrical prose, altar-building, and envelope poems. Though our approach to language and the writing process is rooted in poetics, this class is open to writers of all genres who are curious about writing letters to ghosts and leaning into what is uncertain, unnameable, untameable.

eligibility:

This craft class is open to all AAPI writers. The non-refundable tuition fee is $50. This class will be held over Zoom. There are scholarship spots available, and the applications are open through Sunday, September 17th.

REGISTRATION FOR THIS CLASS IS NOW CLOSED.