Upcoming Workshops
In this four-part seminar, learn the art of the gastronomic memoir and explore personal stories of your own through food writing. Eating is a daily necessity, a pleasure, and an act of creativity. Food connects us to our ancestors, our landscapes, and our bodies. Our relationship to both is complicated, and writing short personal narratives about it can help us to illuminate deeper truths about ourselves.
In this generative memoir-writing workshop led by award-winning writer Gina Rae La Cerva, we’ll use the subject of food as a starting point to explore our inner worlds. We’ll access deep memories, connect to our childhoods, examine our heritage, and reflect on our personal growth. Through short prompts, longer writing assignments, and readings, we’ll examine the craft of writing about food, highlighting the tools needed to create stellar food writing including ingredients, timing, and temperature. Along the way, we’ll look at the essential components of using sensory details to inform and inspire. While there will be some time to share our work and offer feedback as a group, this course will primarily be generative—using our writing as a means to explore all the ways we do and don’t nourish ourselves. Whether you want to write a restaurant review, a reflection on your favorite food memory, or the life history of a family recipe, get ready to cook up some piquant prose.
The Craft of Writing for Photographers | February 19—March 19
There are many overlaps between the craft of photography and the craft of writing. The ability to pair images with words can greatly enhance your photographic work. Writing may feel intimidating at first, but once you understand the basics, it flows easily.
To practice craft on a manageable scale, we focus on flash memoir, a literary micro-genre that encourages us to enliven our senses and emotions, identify moments of insight, and expertly magnify the small aspects of what it means to be human.
Whether you ultimately plan to write an introductory essay for a photo book, enhance your bio or artist statement, or simply create excellent image captions, this workshop helps you discover how enlightening and pleasurable writing can be—especially when you start small. In the process of constructing a piece of flash memoir, you find your creativity reinvigorated, both on the page and through the lens.