Autofiction: The Hybrid Self starts in October
A brief update to let you know that I’ll be teaching an online writing-based class, “Autofiction: The Hybrid Self,” starting Sunday, October 22nd. The class will meet online through Zoom on Sundays from 4–6pm (that’s mountain time) and goes for 8 weeks.
I’m really looking forward to this class, to thinking with other writers about the sorts of questions around narrative that I try to think through in my own writing. To the feeling of community and brightness these online spaces can bring to the early darkness of fall evenings.
The class owes its material and inspiration to many writers, including those whose work we’ll be reading and discussing (Renee Gladman, Derek Jarman, Robert Glück, Pamela Lu + others). I’ll also mention here Miranda Mellis, who wrote this, which I copied and keep/clutch in a document I look at often:
First-person narration is an armature of subjectivity that unifies all the variegated elements of story…When the artist wields subjectivity as his or her subject, in order to reflect upon another scene of (more or less masked, more or less reflexive) subjectivity (for example, science) and to argue for a reckoning with the ramifications of that subjectivity (the scientist’s) with respect to the subject, then the “first-person” function itself is richly emptied out; it becomes a rhetorical figure.
Read the entire piece, “Misapprehension: A Mobile in Ten Parts,” at Conjunctions.
Here’s the class description; you can find this same information and sign up for the class on Lighthouse’s site. (Financial assistance is available.)
In this class, we'll read and explore, through our own writing, the genre (maybe!) of autofiction. What's at stake when the writer is a character in their own story? As writers of autofiction, are there other considerations—in addition to those we bring to writing fiction—that we need to keep in mind? What exactly makes a piece of fiction "autofictional"? What can we learn, from both fiction and nonfiction, about crafting autofiction? How can we be more effective writers of autofiction (and fiction)? While this class is geared for folks who have some experience with writing fiction and/or creative nonfiction, it is open to and welcoming of writers of all genres.
The first part of this class will be focused on reading assigned texts and building a shared vocabulary around course themes pertaining to narrative and narration. The class is inclusive and participatory—we'll take turns leading discussions of the readings and guiding the group in writing exercises and experiments, although the focus will not be on in-class writing. The latter part of the class will focus on writer-led discussions of writing and works-in-progress. Throughout, we'll explore and seek to expand the limits of first-person narrative.
The class takes autofiction as its focus, but to my mind it is also an investigation of the borderlands of narrative, where it is, where it can go, how it operates, when and how it breaks. I think there’s a lot here for writers of all sorts, fiction, nonfiction, hyrbid, all the places amongst and between. Reach out if you have any questions about the class.
<3, Evelyn