Dear You: A Generative Series for Love Gushing

w/ Melissa Leto

Four Tuesdays beginning November 11th over Zoom from 4-6PM PST (11/11, 11/18, 11/25, 12/2)
(All sessions will be recorded and recordings shared with registrants for a limited time afterwards.)

This is a BOGO class—that’s right, when you buy one class you get two facilitators. Mayur Chauhan and Melissa Leto. Don’t you love it?

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground – Rumi (and us, your facilitators). Instead of trying to define love, we just explore through writing various ways in which love shows up in our lives.

Yes, there is eros, the romantic love. But there’s also philia, the platonic love, and philautia the self-love, and agape the unconditional love. What do we call the love we feel when we're marching together? What do we call the love we feel for the orchard, the apple, the ant?

In this four-week online course we will write boldly, and tenderly and yes, hilariously about love in all of its various forms. Through a series of in-class writing portals we’ll write love letters to expected and unexpected recipients alike.

Just because the magnolia tree doesn’t read doesn’t mean we can’t write a love letter and recite it out loud. (Audio books anyone?)

There will be ample opportunity to share and fall in love with your writing.

Pre-requisites: You.

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.

$325 Partner

$275 Supporter (Note: This amount reflects the “real” value of this course.)

$225 Companion

$175 Friend

Scholarships are also available for anyone needing further financial assistance. 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.

Melissa Leto (she/they) is a hybrid-obsessed artist from New York who now lives near the Beeline Highway and Salt River. Her/their work has appeared in KHÔRA, Bloody Funny Zine, Shrew Lit Magazine, Tom Maxedon's Word podcast, and Write on Downtown. Their art making is in conversation with life/death/desire with a current focus on queer crushes, living plants, and upcycled structures. They have an MFA from Northern Arizona University used as a framework for demolishing form. They are the lead facilitator for literary arts non-profit Revisionary Arts and an editor for Rinky Dink Press.

Mayur Chauhan is an LA-based immigrant-actor-writer-comedian and a teacher of creativity. He grew up in New Delhi in such a loving family that when he was leaving for the US, all his relatives came to the airport to ensure it was a one way ticket. He writes stories in all forms. He has published over 30 short humor pieces in McSweeney’s and elsewhere. Mayur is a Breadloaf and Key West Literary Seminar Scholar. Mayur created and facilitates C.A.R.E. for Artists – an online creativity, & accountability group for artists across disciplines. He wants you to know that you’re amazing. ​ Mayur loves writing letters by hand, chai and you.