24PearlStreet Workshops and Events
Nonfiction Forms Lab: A Generative Seminar – LIVE via ZOOM: 11am-1pm (Eastern) on June 10th.
Conventional essay forms offer us familiar containers in which to pour our content. They make predictable narrative sense out of the most acute life experiences. It is a formula that works. The problem with formula and the familiar is that they can lull the imagination, the psyche, and the intellect with anodyne provocations and resolutions. What happens when we lead with structure? What happens to our content when it meets an unfamiliar container? Sometimes, we disrupt familiar narrative forms and find a truer story. In this class, we will examine short published works and generate our own using unconventional forms from diverse sources such as playlists, bestiaries, instruction manuals, and letters. We will explore lyric forms not as hiding places, but as occasions to startle ourselves (and our readers) into new thoughts and feelings.
This Sprint is a 2 hour generative workshop with a stellar writer, centered on a theme.
This workshop is limited to 100 participants.
Biography
Melissa Febos is the bestselling author of four books, including Girlhood, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. Her fifth book, The Dry Season, is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf. Her awards and fellowships include those from the Guggenheim Foundation, Lambda Literary, the National Endowment for the Arts, the British Library, the Black Mountain Institute, the Bogliasco Foundation, and others. Her work has recently appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Best American Essays, and Vogue. Febos is a full professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program.
