COURSE DESCRIPTION — In her introduction to the Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2018, author NK Jemisin discusses the revolutionary potential of speculative fiction. This course will explore what “revolutionary” means for speculative fiction and how we, as storytellers, may achieve that by drawing upon our unique cultural backgrounds. Storytellers will read and discuss craft essays, conduct craft analyses of modern speculative fiction, and workshop their own and others’ pieces twice, with the second being a revision workshop. In addition to a foundational understanding of modern speculative fiction, storytellers will emerge with a workshopped and revised piece of speculative fiction and a detailed craft essay on a contemporary work.

FACULTY BIO:

NASEEM JAMNIA (they/them) is a Persian-Chicagoan, former neuroscientist, and the Judith A. Markowitz award-winning author of The Bruising of Qilwa (Tachyon Publications, 2022), which was shortlisted for IAFA's Crawford Award and the Locus Award, and the upcoming Sleepaway (Aladdin, 2025). Their work has appeared in The Washington Post, Bitch Media, Cosmopolitan, The Rumpus, The Writer's Chronicle, and other venues. A Lambda Literary, Otherwise, and the inaugural Samuel R. Delany Fellow, Naseem is the managing editor at Sword & Kettle Press, a tiny publishing house of feminist speculative writing. Find out at more at www.naseemwrites.com or on Instagram @jamsternazzy.

COURSE DESCRIPTION — This workshop centers on creative nonfiction that explores the overt, covert, and nuanced ways our quotidian experiences are political acts of resilience against oppressive systems // structures // people seeking to annihilate us. Writers will workshop their works-in-progress and excavate setting, character, structure, sensory details, point of view, and voice as physicalizations of the political on the page. Writers will study issues of nonfiction craft and theory, including the role of memory, structure, the construction of timelines, the limitations of genre, and more. Participants will leave the course with a foundational understanding of creative nonfiction. They will also workshop and revise at least one memoir chapter or personal essay.

FACULTY BIO:

NICOLE SHAWAN JUNIOR (they/she) was bred in Brooklyn's bass-heavy beat and scratch. Their writing is anthologized in The Edge of the World: An Anthology of Queer Travel Writing (Blair 2025) and The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting A Writer's Life in Prison (Haymarket 2022). Their nonfiction appears in Oprah Daily, Guernica, The Rumpus, Teachers & Writers, and elsewhere. They are the former editor-in-chief of Black Femme Collective, prose editor at Women's Studies Quarterly of the Feminist Press, nonfiction editor at Raising Mothers, and assistant nonfiction editor at Slice Magazine. They have guest-edited for The Rumpus and The Massachusetts Review. Nicole is a creative writing adjunct professor at the University of the Arts.

COURSE DESCRIPTION — In this generative writing intensive, we will delve deep into the art of the short story, exploring the craft elements that make the short story such a powerful medium of expression. Through a combination of generative exercises, readings, discussions, and workshop, we will explore the various craft components of the short story. We will analyze short works of fiction, dissecting their structures, character development, and themes. We will then implement those techniques and incorporate them into our own works of fiction. This course will have an emphasis on the literary analysis of craft elements—the various parts and mechanisms that keep the engine of a story going. Each week, students will have an opportunity to delve deeper into literary analysis by reading works from different authors. Students will have the opportunity to explore, evaluate, and compare how authors approach characterization, desire, and setting, and how these elements function to enhance plot. By the end of the course, students will have generated, revised, and workshopped an original short work of fiction.

FACULTY BIO:

Annell López is a Dominican immigrant. She is the winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and the author of the short story collection I’LL GIVE YOU A REASON from the Feminist Press. A Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, her work has also received support from Tin House and has appeared in Guernica, American Short Fiction, Michigan Quarterly Review, Brooklyn Rail, Refinery29, and elsewhere. López received her MFA from the University of New Orleans. She is working on a novel.

COURSE DESCRIPTION— “Time Traveling and Time Keeping: Conversations with Audre Lorde and Octavia Butler”

So often our writing ancestors are erased in conventional academic learning or the heart of their writing is reduced to timely quotes. In this course we will be in conversation with two writing multi-genre writing ancestors. Audre Lorde and Octavia Butler. We will write and examine multi-genre writing and poetic craft elements to build our own contemporary multigenre work that bends, restructures and reimagines “form.” We will be creatively inspiQWred by the notion that “paranormal” is normal and traditional fiction can inhabit a poem. The goal for all workshop participants is to complete the course with at least one draft and confidently share what you’ve written or prepare to submit it.

*Text for this class will be provided.

FACULTY BIO:

Anastacia-Renee (She/They) is a queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, speaker and podcaster. She is the author of (v.) (Black Ocean) and Forget It (Black Radish) and, Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere and Sidenotes from the Archivist forthcoming from Amistad (an imprint of HarperCollins). Anastacia-Renee was former Seattle Civic Poet (2017-2019), Hugo House Poet-in-Residence (2015-2017), Arc Artist Fellow (2020) and Jack Straw Curator (2020). Her work has been anthologized in: Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature, Home is Where You Queer Your Heart, Stone: Lessons from Kubota’s Garden, and many more. Her work has appeared in Hobart, Foglifter, Auburn Avenue, Catapult, Alta, Hennepin Review, Ms. Magazine, and others.

Erin E. Adams is a first-generation Haitian-American writer and theatre artist. Her debut novel, JACKAL was a finalist for the Edgar® Award, the Bram Stoker® Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. Her second novel ONE OF YOU will be published in 2025.

The daughter of Nigerian and Trinidadian immigrants, Omotara James’ debut poetry collection, Song of My Softening (Alice James Books), explores her intersectional girlhood and late-blooming womanhood, featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, as well as The Washington Post Book Club.

Samuel Autman is a storyteller, professor, and contributing editor to literary magazines and anthologies. With an MFA from Columbia University, he’s an alumnus of VONA Voices, Lambda Literary, Disquiet International, Tin House, Wild Seeds Retreat, and Kimbilio Fiction. *Photo credit: DePauw University