How do you write in the midst of the constant disruptions of this present political climate, without ignoring them? How do you honor your inner life and address and acknowledge external chaos? Writers have always dealt with these questions, in the best and worst of times.

During six classes, students will write exercises using the personas of nonfiction, poetry, and fiction writers, such as Joy Harjo, Mark Twain, Czeslaw Milosz, Eduardo Galeano, Ilya Kaminsky, Ross Gay, Martin Espada, Patricia Lockwood, or Claudia Rankine as sources of guidance and inspiration. Students will be asked to do exercises borrowing these personas and others in order to seek the fragile truth through the lens of these imaginative alter egos.

Instructor

Writers Studio Teacher

Lisa Bellamy

Lisa Bellamy is the author of The Northway, a full-length poetry collection (Terrapin Books). Her chapbook Nectar won The Aurorean’s poetry chapbook contest. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in TriQuarterly, The Sun, Massachusetts Review, New Ohio Review, The Southern Review, Sho, Allium, Verse Daily, Hotel Amerika, Salamander, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Chautauqua, Kestrel, Gyroscope Review, The Southampton Review, Calyx, Cimarron Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction (2nd-place competition prize), Tiferet, Anglican Theological Review, PANK, Christian Century, and Literary Field Guide to Northern Appalachia (University of Georgia Press), among other publications. She has received two Pushcart Prizes, a Fugue Poetry Prize, honorable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and has been featured in podcasts, including The Writer’s Almanac. The U.N. Network on Migration featured her poem "Yoho" in its 2022 exhibition. She is a graduate of Princeton University. Lisa is working on new collections of poetry and short fantasy prose.

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