Tupelo Quarterly is pleased to announce the launch of our latest workshops!
Dream Poetics: A Generative Workshop
with Wendy Chen
September 30th from 2PM to 4PM ET via Zoom
How can dreams serve as the basis for new work? How can the study of dream logic become a tool for us as writers in our artistic practice? In this course, we’ll close-read several poems that engage in dream poetics by authors such as Jackie Wang, Hélène Cixous, and Edgar Garcia. We will then use dreams as material to generate poems through several exercises and prompts.
Meet Your Instructor
Wendy Chen is the author of Unearthings (Tavern Books), editor of Figure 1, and associate editor-in-chief of Tupelo Quarterly. She earned her MFA in poetry from Syracuse University and her PhD in English at the University of Denver. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Algonquin in 2024. Her translation of Song-dynasty writer Li Qingzhao is forthcoming from FSG in 2025. Currently, she teaches poetry at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
__________________
Devil, Speak: A Poetry Workshop
with Mitchell Glazier
October 7th from 1PM to 3PM ET via Zoom
What does it mean to embody a devilish or trickster persona in poems, what can be accomplished by doing so, and what happens when we empower others to do the same? Might we avenge our smaller, more mutable selves, and even welcome epiphany and artistic breakthrough in the process?
We will explore the darker side of the psyche by reading selected poems by Sylvia Plath, Dorothea Lasky, Anne Sexton, Lucie Brock-Broido, Sharon Olds, Louise Glück, and others to court a poetics of disobedience, shock, awe, and the feral.
Part and parcel with the readings, we will write poems and imitations, respond to the work of our peers, and take an active role in the ritual of poetry writing.
Meet Your Instructor
Mitchell Glazier is a poet from West Virginia. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University, where he was awarded a teaching fellowship. His poetry has appeared in Washington Square Review, Annulet, Tupelo Quarterly, and other places. Mitchell reads for American Chordata and manages a creative writing program for high school students at Columbia’s School of the Arts.
__________________
Prose Poetry
with Emma O’Leary and Tiffany Troy
October 8th from 7:30PM to 9:30PM ET via Zoom
What makes a prose poem a poem? By disavowing stanzas, prose poetry offers an exciting alternative to traditional lyric poetry, creating a field of concentrated energy.
In this interactive cross-genre workshop, we will look at prose poems and examine how the sonic quality of poetry is in fact not lost–but amplified–through assonances, rhymes, and rhythm. Prose poems allow for the uncanny through a buildup of images and metaphors. We will delve into creative writing exercises and write our own prose poems.
Meet Your Instructors
Emma O’Leary is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program, where she taught a course on Ekphrasis and volunteered with the Incarcerated Writers Initiative. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, and she teaches writing in New York City. She is at work on her debut novel.
Tiffany Troy is the author of Dominus (BlazeVOX [books]) and the chapbook When Ilium Burns (Bottlecap Press), as well as co-translator of Santiago Acosta’s The Coming Desert /El próximo desierto (forthcoming, Alliteration Publishing House), in collaboration with Acosta and the 4W International Women Collective Translation Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a finalist of the Changing Light Award from Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama. Her literary criticism, translation, and creative writing are published or forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, BOMB Magazine, The Cortland Review, EcoTheo Review, Hong Kong Review of Books, Latin American Literature Today, The Laurel Review, The Los Angeles Review, Matter, New World Writing, Rain Taxi, and Tupelo Quarterly, where she is Managing Editor. She has taught creative writing through Columbia University’s Artist/ Teacher and Pre-College programs.
___________________
The Art of Ekphrasis
with Emma O’Leary and Tiffany Troy
October 15th from 7:30PM to 9:30PM ET via Zoom
Horace, in his Epistles, writes, “poetry is like a painting.” Indeed, artists often liken poetry — and prose — to visual art. In this course, we will examine this connection through ekphrasis.
We will consider ekphrasis as a detailed description and/or story wrought from art: Ultimately, art will inspire us to write. We will interpret and confront visual art ranging from Georgia O’Keeffe’s desert landscapes, to René Magritte’s oblique floating men, to Marc Chagall’s stained class, and others. We will read short ekphrastic excerpts from John Keats, Homer, and more. This class will be a workshop.
Meet Your Instructors
Emma O’Leary is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program, where she taught a course on Ekphrasis and volunteered with the Incarcerated Writers Initiative. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, and she teaches writing in New York City. She is at work on her debut novel.
Tiffany Troy is the author of Dominus (BlazeVOX [books]) and the chapbook When Ilium Burns (Bottlecap Press), as well as co-translator of Santiago Acosta’s The Coming Desert /El próximo desierto (forthcoming, Alliteration Publishing House), in collaboration with Acosta and the 4W International Women Collective Translation Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a finalist of the Changing Light Award from Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama. Her literary criticism, translation, and creative writing are published or forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, BOMB Magazine, The Cortland Review, EcoTheo Review, Hong Kong Review of Books, Latin American Literature Today, The Laurel Review, The Los Angeles Review, Matter, New World Writing, Rain Taxi, and Tupelo Quarterly, where she is Managing Editor. She has taught creative writing through Columbia University’s Artist/ Teacher and Pre-College programs.
___________________
Art & Word
with Janée Baugher
October 21st from 10AM ET to 12PM ET via Zoom
This generative workshop will delight writers interested in discovering how engaging with the visual arts can ignite their poems, stories, and personal essays. Artwork will be provided, though you’re welcome to bring in art images of your choosing. The mode of “ekphrastic writing” is defined as descriptive writing influenced by the visual arts. Students will learn the art of deep- looking, the conventions of responding to art, and they’ll be introduced to artists and art from across the globe. We’ll learn methods of art-engagement and conventions of responding to art, we’ll read poems by poets who use these techniques, and we’ll pen our own ekphrastic writing.
Meet Your Instructor
Janée J. Baugher, MFA (public speaker, educator, cross-disciplinary artist) is the author of The Ekphrastic Writer: Creating Art-Influenced Poetry, Fiction and Nonfiction (McFarland), as well as the poetry collections Coördinates of Yes (Ahadada Books) and The Body’s Physics (Tebot Bach). Instagram @ekphrastic_writer
___________________
A Short Course on the Stories of Shirley Jackson
with Mitchell Glazier
October 21st from 1PM to 3PM ET via Zoom
Shirley Hardie Jackson (December 14, 1916 – August 8, 1965) remains one of the most influential mystery writers of all time and has gone on to influence the likes of Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Donna Tartt, and countless others. Consider “The Lottery” (1948), which inspired a lifetime of frequent hate mail from aghast readers of The New Yorker and is still one of the most widely anthologized American short stories.
But how do Jackson’s stories remain obelisks in the world of literary suspense writing today? What do her observations both reveal and conceal about the dark heart of suburban Americana, both past and present? We will also discuss the qualities of humor that vein her work.
In this hybrid seminar-workshop course, we will read selected stories by Jackson, think critically about the elements of style that conjure both gooseflesh and laughter, and write our own imitations.
Meet Your Instructor
Mitchell Glazier is a poet from West Virginia. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University, where he was awarded a teaching fellowship. His poetry has appeared in Washington Square Review, Annulet, Tupelo Quarterly, and other places. Mitchell reads for American Chordata and manages a creative writing program for high school students at Columbia’s School of the Arts.
___________________
Law and Literature
with Emma O’Leary and Tiffany Troy
October 22nd from 7:30PM to 9:30PM ET via Zoom
In this workshop, we will explore the connection between literature about the law. We’ll read “The Fable” by Charles Yu and poems by Martín Espada to look at and study how rhetoric shapes the dramatization of trials in an adversarial legal system and how facts and memory jive with a search for deeper truth and justice.
Meet Your Instructors
Emma O’Leary is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program, where she taught a course on Ekphrasis and volunteered with the Incarcerated Writers Initiative. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, and she teaches writing in New York City. She is at work on her debut novel.
Tiffany Troy is the author of Dominus (BlazeVOX [books]) and the chapbook When Ilium Burns (Bottlecap Press), as well as co-translator of Santiago Acosta’s The Coming Desert /El próximo desierto (forthcoming, Alliteration Publishing House), in collaboration with Acosta and the 4W International Women Collective Translation Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a finalist of the Changing Light Award from Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama. Her literary criticism, translation, and creative writing are published or forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, BOMB Magazine, The Cortland Review, EcoTheo Review, Hong Kong Review of Books, Latin American Literature Today, The Laurel Review, The Los Angeles Review, Matter, New World Writing, Rain Taxi, and Tupelo Quarterly, where she is Managing Editor. She has taught creative writing through Columbia University’s Artist/ Teacher and Pre-College programs.
___________________
Coming of Out of the Shell: On the Hermit Crab Essay
with Hasanthika Sirisena
November 4th from 1PM to 3PM ET via Zoom
In this generative workshop we’ll consider essays that incorporate found forms: a crossword puzzle, a medical history, a recipe. Hermit crab essays are an increasingly popular form that allows the essayist to play, to search, to imbue essays with layers of meaning. We’ll take a look at some hermit crab essays, discuss the opportunities, and the limits, of incorporating found forms, and we’ll practice the form through short generative prompts.
Meet Your Instructor
Hasanthika Sirisena’s work has appeared in Electric Literature, Literary Hub, Michigan Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, Kenyon Review Online, and other magazines; has been anthologized in This is the Place (Seal Press, 2017) and in Every Day People: The Color of Life (Atria Books, 2018); and named notable by Best American Short Stories in 2011 and 2012 and Best American Essays in 2022. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and is a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award recipient. She is currently faculty at the MFA Program in Writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Susquehanna University. Her short story collection The Other One was the winner of the Juniper Prize for Fiction and was released in 2016. Her essay collection Dark Tourist (Mad Creek Books, 2021) won the 2020 Gournay Prize and was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award.
Register here!
______________________________________________________