Craft as Conjuration: Fiction

a generative webinar with Janice Lee, Domi Shoemaker, and Daniel Isaiah Elder

Saturday December 13th over Zoom from 12pm to 2pm Pacific
(A recording will be made available to all registrants for a limited period afterwards)

… a way of trying to describe what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everything else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story … [T]here is room enough to keep even Man where he belongs, in his place in the scheme of things; there is time enough to gather plenty of wild oats and sow them too, and sing to little Oom, and listen to Ool's joke, and watch newts, and still the story isn't over. Still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars.

— Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”

Instead, after every ending I was nagged by the uncanny sensation that I had been close to something I could never fully grasp. That was enough, I told myself; even more than enough.

— Cristina Rivera Garza, New and Selected Stories

This lab is an invitation to explore and dive into the craft of fiction. This is not a traditional workshop on craft but rather an expansive and generative lab interested in the possibilities, play, and potential in fiction. What might we learn from a body of work using multiple POVs? What if we pay close attention to the sentence and consider its energy, entryway, porosity; its invitation into something else? How might repetition (of phrases, words) rethink our understanding of time? How might the characters and worlds (mushroom, oven, human, etc.) in our stories blossom, explode, transform? What or who has not been paid attention to, and what paths or tangents might we follow that take us somewhere else?

In Craft as Conjuration: Fiction, we will explore various craft elements (point of view, character, worldbuilding, time, structure, etc.) and we will discover what magic can be brewed when concocting our sentences, words, fictional worlds.

Pricing:

The following payment model is inspired by and borrowed from the payment model of Bayo Akomolafe’s class, We Will Dance With Mountains: Into the Cracks.

This workshop offers a sliding scale based on your relative financial standing. In an effort to reflect disparity in economic condition and access to wealth, the following payment system is designed for those with more wealth to help cover the costs of those with less access to wealth and resources. We trust your discernment of your current financial situation and how you fit into the global economic context.

As you decide what amount to pay, please consider your present-day financial situation governed by income, but also the following factors: historical discrimination faced by your peoples; your financial wealth (retirement/savings/investments); your access to income and financial wealth, both current and anticipated (how easily could you earn more income compared to other people in your community, country, and the world; are you expecting an inheritance); people counting on your financial livelihood including dependents and community members; the socio-economic conditions of your locale (relative to other places in your country and in the world); your relationship to food & resource scarcity.

$250 Partner

$175 Supporter

$100 Companion

We always offer payment plans. Please email Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com for more info, or if you are feeling challenged in any way by the financial requirements of participation.

Janice Lee (she/they) is a Korean American writer, teacher, spiritual scholar, and shamanic healer. She is the author of 8 books of fiction, creative nonfiction & poetry, most recently Imagine a Death (Texas Review Press, 2021) and Separation Anxiety (CLASH Books, 2022), a finalist for the 2023 Oregon Book Award. Lee teaches workshops on inherited trauma, healing and writing, and facilitates guided meditations bringing together elements from several different lineages as a mesa-carrying practitioner of the Q’ero tradition of medicine work and as a practitioner of Engaged Buddhism (in the tradition of Plum Village and Thich Nhat Hanh). She also incorporates elements of ancestor work, Korean shamanic ritual (Muism), traditional Korean folk practices, plant medicine & flower essence work, card readings & divination, and interspecies communication. She currently lives in Portland, OR where she is the Operational Creative Director at Corporeal Writing and an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Portland State University. She can be found online at https://janicel.com/ and Instagram: @diddioz

Domi Shoemaker is the gender-free co-founder of Lidia Yuknavitch’s Corporeal Writing, where  Domi manages virtual drop-in, connects writers with one another, and leads writing collaborations online and in-person. They also offer coaching and editing services through Corporeal Writing and they would love to talk with you about writing. 

Daniel Isaiah Elder (he/they) is a queer Jewish writer and a Lambda Literary fellow. Originally from New York City, he is now based in Portland, Oregon.