This class is for you if want to explore writing as a way of being, cultivate more intimacy with perception, and are unabashed about the idea of the earth as a stubbornly enchanted place. By “writing as a way of being” I mean forming dependable, daily habits; by “perception” I mean: the feel of thought sending tender roots down or pushing up through hard ground into the light, and by “stubbornly enchanted” I mean eager to be in relationship with us, even now.

In this generative makeshop (not a workshop!), you’ll be creating, sharing, and discussing work with others. We’ll also reflect on pre-assigned essays and poems by writers whose work is marked by transformative, idiosyncratic, and, yes, enchanted ways of seeing and organizing. At the end of the session, we’ll touch on revision techniques and further generative practices.

You’ll come away with drafts to grow, fresh ways of engaging artifacts, landscapes, and memories, and a new writing community.

Lia Purpura, teacher of this Makeshop, is the author of ten collections, including essays, poems, translations and artists’ books. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for On Looking (essays), her awards include Guggenheim, NEA, and Fulbright Fellowships, as well as five Pushcart Prizes, the AWP Award and others. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Orion, The Paris Review, The Georgia Review, Agni, Emergence, and elsewhere. Purpura has served as Writer in Residence at The University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Loyola University; other teaching venues include the Rainier Writing Workshop, the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction MFA program, as well as workshops at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility, and the Glenwood Life Recovery Center. Her newest collections are It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful (poems) and All the Fierce Tethers (essays).