This workshop will celebrate the fluidity of queer writing, and will be of interest to writers working across multiple genres, fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction.
In line with other recent London Lit Lab courses and workshops, such as those led by Tania Hershman, on ‘Hybrid Writing: Unbox your Words’ and Kylie Fitzpatrick, ‘Finding Your Voice: Reclaiming the Inner Writer’, it will celebrate intersectionality – plus writing that can’t be categorised.
While it will envelop short fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction, the emphasis will be on identifying and writing the stories we long to write, if only we are able to confront them, or stories we’ve buried, perhaps even from ourselves.
One debate that continues is whether LGBTQIA+ writers are ‘better off’ writing from the fringes or for the ‘mainstream’. This workshop works on the simple premise that we don’t need to strive for anything but authenticity.
Reconnecting queer writers to those stories they may have previously vetoed, for fear that they’re not ‘publishable’, or may be shameful, the workshop will draw on coaching principles to help participants consider why our inner critic might be wrong, and how, as LGBTQIA+ writers, we can be tender to ourselves.
Through exercises that gently question what we’re writing, and for whom, the workshop will enable participants to see the potential of their queerest stories, be they unvarnished memoirs, painful-to-write poetry, or genre-bending fiction. Whatever our concerns about the tastes of our audience, or the marketability of our prose, by the end of the workshop we will be committed to writing some of our boldest, bravest words.
With samples of writing from queer writers as diverse as Carmen Maria Machado, and the poet, Andrew McMillan, plus three exercises for participants to engage with, exploring our different creative ‘energies’ – tenderness and fierceness among them – the workshop ethos is that queer writing can be experimental and elastic.
To be stimulated and freed to be queer and creative, join this workshop that places a premium on your unique story, in all its kaleidoscopic glory.
