NOTE THE DATE FOR THIS CLASS HAS CHANGED TO SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2023 1PM-4PM.

In this craft workshop, we will explore the ways in which paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculpture inspire, collaborate with, and complement our writing process.

Why not dance to architecture? For isn’t dance an art of movement and choreography—bodies in space—and architecture the study of static form existing in and altering its environment? Couldn’t a dancer choose to dance, say, in the courtyard of a castle or on a wharf? One art calls to the other; one artist pays homage to, collaborates with, another’s work. George Steiner dubbed this “enacted criticism.” I see it as a desire to create hybrid forms. We'll start by examining both ekphrastic and hybrid works by writers such as Claudia Rankine, Geoff Dyer, Larry Levis, Yusef Komunyakaa, Teju Cole, W.G. Sebald, Sally Mann, Ross Gay, Terry Tempest Williams, and Michael Ondaatje. We will then try our hand at a pair of exercises that engage these techniques. 

Poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers welcome.

SEBASTIAN MATTHEWS is the author of the memoir In My Father’s Footsteps and three books of poems, Beginner’s Guide to a Head-on Collision, We Generous, and Miracle Day. Beginner’s Guide won the Independent Publisher Book Award's silver medal. Matthews also co-edited, along with Stanley Plumly, Search Party: The Collected Poems of William Matthews (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize). He currently serves on the board at Vermont Studio Center and on the advisory board for Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts & Letters. His most recent books are, Beyond Repair: Living in a Fractured State and The Life & Times of American Crow.