Class Description
When writing about trauma and loss, how do we navigate the psychological toll of our material? Do we write about abuse, suicide, genocide, and other personal and historical trauma until we break or burn out? Or do we allow ourselves to work on other stories, books, genres, and even non-writing projects? This seminar will address ongoing battles with and successful, pragmatic strategies for willingly and unwillingly embracing and inducing side projects as self-care. We will interrogate how to productively avoid and embrace unique demands of writing about personal and historical trauma and loss. We’ll address craft, publishing, and the writing life at large, appealing to multi-genre writers of all levels. Bring a list of projects you’re currently working on, wish you were working on, or want to avoid working on at all costs.
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. After registering, a yellow Resources tab will appear in this section containing a link to join class. Please note that you will need to be logged into view the Resources tab.
Zoom Participation:
In our experience, the intimate nature of a writing workshop benefits from on-camera participation. Students are of course welcome to turn their camera off whenever they need to, but it is a community norm for cameras to be on most of the time. You can learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
You can enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to access the transcript after class, please make sure to let your instructor ahead of time that you'd like a copy.