Class

Crafting Intimate Narratives: A Workshop for Queer & Trans Writers

Desire—including the pursuit of tangible material items, love, and longing--drives any story worth telling. This includes writing sex, which can be notoriously intimidating. Factor in the rise of regulations against trans/queer bodies and the frequent erasure of LGBTQIA2S+ people in the media and writers can easily decide it’s not worth the effort. But it is. Writing about sex is an exploration of our humanity. It is a craft issue. It is a radical and necessary practice for the writer interested in changing their world. We’ll start this class with the understanding that, yes, sex on the page can be done (very) well whether it is (or is not) explicit. Then we’ll consider some of the things sex scenes can do: how they offer powerful tools for exploring character, context, theme, and history. We’ll accomplish this through close reading a range of examples of sex writing from authors including Audre Lorde, Garth Greenwell, Bryan Washington, Melissa Febos, R.O. Kwon, Andrea Lawlor, Anna-Marie McLemore, and others. Writers in this class can expect generative exercises, take-home prompts, a supportive community, and the potential for sharing your work.

No class on July 1.