Creative Writing from Queer Resistance

DATE: October 4 – November 29, 6:30 to 8:30 pm (8 Wednesday evenings, no meeting on November 22)
APPLICATION: Deadline September 27th. notification by October 1st. (maximun 12 participants)
SLIDING SCALE: $40 – $200 (determined by participant, and paid after first meeting)

**No one turned away for lack of funds**

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP
Led by writer, teacher, and literary organizer, Nancy Agabian, this creative writing workshop offers a space for writers of all levels (from beginning to experienced) to support and learn from each other in writing for social justice. We will read works by LGBT and queer authors from various time periods, communities, and movements in order to take inspiration from their content and craft. What can we learn from works by writers such as James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, Sarah Schulman, Gil Cuadros, David Wojnarowicz, Thea Hillman, Ryka Aoki, Roxane Gay -- and others to be determined by the interests of the group -- to inform our rage, to analyze our responses and/or to create new narratives to celebrate and empower our communities? Our goal is to write short personal essays, short stories, and/or hybrid texts that challenge, resist, and subvert homophobia, transphobia, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, etc., at this political and cultural moment. Discussions and interactive exercises will lead to writing prompts that we'll do together and during the week. Short drafts will be critiqued through a productive process during the last few meetings. A reading of new work by workshop members will take place at the museum on December 6th.

ABOUT NANCY AGABIAN
Nancy Agabian is a writer, teacher, and literary organizer, working in the spaces between race, ethnicity, cultural identity, feminism and queer identity. She is the author of Princess Freak, a poetry and performance text collection, and Me as her again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter, a memoir which was honored as a Lambda Literary Award finalist for LGBT Nonfiction and shortlisted for a William Saroyan International Prize. Nancy has also written and performed several autobiographical one-woman shows, which have been presented internationally. Her novel manuscript “The Fear of Large and Small Nations” was recently a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially-Engaged fiction. Nancy is an award-winning teacher with 20 years of experience working in community. She teaches creative writing at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University and through Heightening Stories, her series of community-based workshops that focus on social issues as well as craft, held online and in Queens, where she lives.

For more information, please email Nancy Agabian at nancyagabian@gmail.com