Class Description
Rainbow love to the front! This class celebrates the many forms of queer love and the stories that hold them. Each week, we’ll read and discuss work by LGBTQ+ writers such as Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red, and Justin Torres’s Reverting to a Wild State. Together, we’ll explore different ways to capture queerness and love on the page through voice, form, and character.
You’ll experiment with prompts and exercises to generate new material and deepen your understanding of how desire, identity, and intimacy can shape a narrative. We’ll pay special attention to developing complex, authentic characters and layered emotional worlds. The last class will be reserved for sharing our new stories and receiving light, on-the-spot feedback.
By the end of the course, you’ll have several new pieces in progress, inspiration from contemporary queer literature, and the support of a creative community of LGBTQ+ writers to help you keep going.
Writers will NOT be expected to write, read, or do any preparation outside of sessions. Writers will be asked to prioritize their creativity, authenticity, vulnerability, and play in their writing (as opposed to prioritizing productivity and “publishable”/”good” writing). Writers of all genres, from speculative fiction to memoir to hybrid forms and beyond, are welcome!
Writing Roadmap: We've created a simple, goal-based writing roadmap to help you find the perfect GrubStreet course for your writing needs.
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.