In this 120-minute discussion and workshop, we will cover how to incorporate Indigenous characters respectfully into your fiction works. Adult, YA, and Children's writers welcome. We learn so little about Indigenous histories and cultures in school and so rarely see them incorporated (respectfully) into movies, TV shows, and literature that to some it can seem challenging to write Indigenous characters. We will discuss why representation has been so little and so poor. We will spend the majority of our time talking about strategies to round out characters aimed at understanding and avoiding misrepresentation. Feel free to bring with you a project that you are already working on, such as a novel, outline, or short story. Together, we will learn how to be better, more thoughtful interactors with our worlds. This course is for any level, and throughout the workshop, we will engage in several writing exercises to practice this in your work.

Instructor: Melissa Michal

Melissa Michal’s work focuses on her community’s histories and experiences. She is of Seneca, Welsh, and English descent and is a fiction and screenplay writer, essayist, photographer, and a DEI coach and Consultant. She currently resides on Narragansett territory. Melissa has work appearing in The Florida Review, Arkana, Yellow Medicine Review, Transmotion, Presumed Incompetent the second edition, and other spaces. Her short story collection, Living Along the Borderlines (2019), out with Feminist Press, was a finalist for the Louise Meriwether first book prize. She has drafted a screenplay adaptation of her story, “The Long Goodbye” from that collection. She writes Indigenous futurism novels and her first novel and essay collection are both finished, with a new serial killer novel in the works.

Check out her webpage at www.melissamichalwriter.net

Incorporating Native American Characters Into Your Writing