Speculative Nonfiction: Using Others to Tell Your Story

In this prose workshop we will mine the Guinness Book of World Records for writing prompts. The focus will be on brief explorations of the self through the subjectivity of others. We will take liberties with truth and reality. We will invent lives and fabricate characters. We will feed on the subjective experience of others—all in an effort to tell a larger objectively true story of our own. The goal is to tease this larger story out by focusing on things outside our own experience. In other words, we will be writing what we don’t know and see where it takes us. This workshop will emphasize short “language driven” pieces of prose. Participants will be asked to read their work aloud.

Steven Church earned his MFA in fiction from CSU in May, 2002 and completed the Portfolio Option in Nonfiction in Fall, 2002. His work has been published in Fourth Genre, Puerto Del Sol, Quarter After Eight, Quarterly West, Post Road, A, and Riverteeth. His nonfiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and he was recently awarded an Artist Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction from the Colorado Council on the Arts. He is a founding member of the local writing/arts activism group, The Minions, and Co-Coordinator for Poetry and Prose at the Bas Bleu Theatre.

Email: swcras@juno.com
Enrollment Limit: 20