Bad at Sex: Writing Awkward, Messy, and Comedic Desire
Sex can be a fundamental aspect of our relationships with others and an act of affirmation for queer and trans identities, but writing about sex often leads writers down a path towards the transcendental. While this is all well and good, it can be a slippery slope towards cliche and overly metaphorical. This open-genre workshop will focus on the awkward, the messy, and the humorous aspects of sex and desire.
7 - 9 PM EST both days (virtual) - 4 hours of instruction time
Workshop Fee: $150
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Bad at Sex: Writing Awkward, Messy, and Comedic Desire
2 Mondays November 6 & November 13, 2023
7:00 – 9:00pm Eastern both dates (two 2 hour sessions)
Virtual
DESCRIPTION
Sex can be a fundamental aspect of our relationships with others and an act of affirmation for queer and trans identities, but writing about sex often leads writers down a path towards the transcendental. While this is all well and good, it can be a slippery slope towards cliche and overly metaphorical. We also miss out on what sex often is: hilarious, messy, awkward, fun.
This open-genre workshop will focus on the awkward, the messy, and the humorous aspects of sex and desire. We will explore some of the craft fundamentals of sex writing, including erotic tension, balancing gestural vs. metaphorical, and sensory details. We will also discuss cultural components of sex, including kink and why it is fundamental for disentangling and defying normative aspects of sex and desire. Ultimately, sex and romantic attraction are acts of communication and we will explore how communication is a necessary component in expressing desire.
This is an open-genre workshop and will include both fiction and poetry as short in-class readings, as well as further reading between classes. Generative, in-class activities will help build on lessons through this workshop. Readings will include work from Melissa Febos, Brontez Purnell, Danez Smith, and Meredith Talusan.
Learning objectives
Participants will gain an understanding of:
- Fundamentals of sex writing (erotic tension, sensory details, communication, gestural v. metaphorical, balancing action v. scene, interiority v. exteriority)
- Kink and why it is relevant for disentangling and defying normative aspects of sex and desire
- Stakes and why they are helpful for short-circuiting communication
FACILITATOR BIO
Hannah Gregory is a trans, queer writer and educator based in Western Massachusetts. She was a 2022 Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction, an alum of Tin House Summer Workshop and CRIT, and is currently a fiction reader at Guernica. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Small Fictions and has appeared in Taco Bell Quarterly, The Normal School, Passages North, and elsewhere.
Poetry and Memoir
In this generative workshop, we will use objects of significance, including family photos, memorabilia, personal narratives, and/or oral her/histories to enter memoir-themed poems. Whose story are we telling, particularly when writing about loved ones that are no longer with us? How important is it that our poems be historically accurate? These are a few of the questions we will explore as we use our personal narratives, photos, and oral Her/histories to enter poems.
1-3 PM EST both days (virtual) - 4 hours of instruction time
Workshop Fee: $150
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Poetry and Memoir
2 Sundays November 12 & November 19, 2023
1-3 PM Eastern both dates (two 2 hr sessions)
Virtual
DESCRIPTION
In this generative workshop, we will use objects of significance, including family photos, memorabilia, personal narratives, and/or oral her/histories to enter memoir-themed poems. Whose story are we telling, particularly when writing about loved ones that are no longer with us? How important is it that our poems be historically accurate? When do we give ourselves permission to honestly write our painful Herstories? Whose story are we trying to tell? Is this our story to tell? These are a few of the questions we will explore as we use our personal narratives, photos, and oral Her/histories to enter poems. Multiple poetic forms written in class may include haibun, persona, or narrative poems. Handouts of poems in the memoir genre will be distributed and discussed.
FACILITATOR BIO
JP Howard is a poet, educator, literary activist, curator and community builder. JP was the Spring 2023 Brooklyn College Tow Mentor-in-Residence. Her debut poetry collection, SAY/MIRROR (The Operating System), was a Lambda Literary finalist. She is also the author of bury your love poems here (Belladonna*), Praise This Complicated Herstory: Legacy, Healing & Revolutionary Poems (Harlequin Creature) and co-editor of Sinister Wisdom Journal Black Lesbians–We Are the Revolution! JP was a featured author in Lambda Literary’ s LGBTQ Writers in Schools Program and is featured in the Lesbian Poet Trading Card Series from Headmistress Press. She has received fellowships and/or grants from Cave Canem, VONA, Lambda Literary Foundation, and Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). She curates Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon. JP’s poetry is widely anthologized and her poetry and/or essays have been featured in The New York Times, The Slowdown podcast, The Academy of American Poets, Apogee Journal, The Feminist Wire, Split this Rock, and Muzzle Magazine. JP is a general Poetry Editor for Women’s Studies Quarterly and Editor-At-Large of Mom Egg Review VOX online. http://www.jp-howard.com
Queer American Sonnets
In American hands, the sonnet is a radically flexible verse form, ranging from traditional Shakespearean and Petrarchan versions to an array of nonce, variant, and free verse poems. In this workshop, participants will look at the enduring lure of the sonnet—examining the history of the sonnet as a love poem, learning to recognize the various types of sonnets, and writing sonnets of their own.
7 - 9 PM EST (virtual) - 6 hours of instruction time
Workshop Fee: $225
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Queer American Sonnets
3 Wednesdays, November 29, December 6, December 13, 2023
7 – 9 PM EST all dates (three 2 hr sessions)
Virtual
DESCRIPTION
In American hands, the sonnet is a radically flexible verse form, ranging from traditional Shakespearean and Petrarchan versions to an array of nonce, variant, and free verse poems. Americans have invested in an ongoing reckoning with the sonnet, with its forebears and European roots, and questions of our right to belong to the tradition. Some of the most interesting modern sonnets stretch the formal constraints as a way of negotiating questions of race, ethnicity, class, and diaspora—but also, perhaps especially, as a way of examining gender and sexuality. In this workshop, participants will look at the enduring lure of the sonnet—examining the history of the sonnet as a love poem, learning to recognize the various types of sonnets, and writing sonnets of their own.
FACILITATOR BIO
Kim Roberts is a queer Jewish poet and literary historian living in Washington, DC. She is the author of six books of poems, most recently Corona/Crown, a cross-disciplinary collaboration with photographer Robert Revere (WordTech Editions, 2023), which features a 14-part prose poem modeled after a traditional sonnet crown. Roberts edited By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of our Nation’s Capital (University of Virginia Press, 2020), selected by the East Coast Centers for the Book and DC Public Library to represent Washington, DC in the Route 1 Reads program. She is the author of the popular guidebook, A Literary Guide to Washington, DC: Walking in the Footsteps of American Writers from Francis Scott Key to Zora Neale Hurston (University of Virginia Press, 2018). Roberts has been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the DC Commission on the Arts, an Individual Practitioner Fellowship from Humanities DC, and was a 2023 Pride Writer-in-Residence at the Arts Club of Washington. http://www.kimroberts.org
