Instructor: Zamora
TR 9:30 AM – 10:50 AM
Art calls for boundlessness, much like the human imagination. This advanced-level creative writing workshop explores intersections and weavings of genres including cross-genre forms and innovative/experimental mediums that may speak to, or are in communication with, other modalities of writing, art, pop culture, news, scientific texts, research, law, historical texts, and more.
In this discussion-centric, writing-intensive workshop, we will wonder in the current landscape of hybridity in contemporary creative writing and consider future possibilities of creating art in cross-genre and interdisciplinary forms. Cross-genre forms pull together a multiplicity of different genres—for instance poetry, prose, and found imagery coexist in texts like Claudia Rankine’s Just Us: An American Conversation and C.D. Wright’s Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil; or how in Harrison Candelaria Fletcher’s book Presentimento: A Life in Dreams, the lines between nonfiction and imaginative memory become blurred in historical recreations of familial moments; or how Tommy Pico’s books Junk and Nature Poem incorporate the lyric, prose, and Kumeyaay narrative tradition of epic storytelling; or how in El Río. The River: A Collaboration, the art of Zoe Leonard’s photography meets Dolores Dorantes text and translations.
Interdisciplinary forms borrow structure and/or function from other genres and disciplines (such as paintings, tweets, telegrams, footnotes, sculptures, billboards, video games, films, postcards, websites, decks of cards, etc.) and may take many forms including flash memoir, prose poetry, chorus song, script notes, haibuns, and tactile representations of these cross-pollination moments. As a collective, we will wonder, examine, and investigate many examples of hybrid forms. Students will create their own hybrid art and final chapbook projects. Students will attend to art of published authors, their own newly created art, and the art of other students in the class through celebration and analysis in a workshop format.