Writing the Macabre—Horror in Creative Nonfiction with Sayantani Dasgupta

Please come to room 303 in the Catalyst Building to join us for this craft class!

Horror, as a literary theme, exists in every writing genre, be it supernatural, science fiction, fairy tales, folk lore, environmental nonfiction, and even memoir and dark comedy. Consuming horror can be an escapist and cathartic experience but writing it can be challenging given the weight of our daily, complex lives more so in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. This craft talk/workshop will study techniques used by authors as diverse as Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (fairy tales), Nathaniel Philbrick (narrative nonfiction), and Sonali Deraniyagala (memoir) to see how they incorporate horror within their writing. There will be writing prompts to help us dig into our own minds and memories so we may write true stories about even our most ordinary experiences that will still challenge the reader’s sense of the Self and the world.