The Haunted Muse: Trauma, Memory, Desire and the Art of Ghosts
Fall 2024
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“Nature is a haunted house—but Art—is a house that tries to be haunted.” - Emily Dickinson
What haunts you? In this generative creative writing class led by Dr. Erica Anzalone, we will delve into the spectral realm of ghosts as both personal and cultural memory and explore how they serve as powerful metaphors for trauma and desire. By examining how ghosts manifest in literature and art, we will uncover their potential as the ultimate muse for creative writing.
Witch Lit
Fall 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
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“All art is magic.” — Aleister Crowley
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Writing with Witch Archetypes
Spring 2024
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Blue Rose: Writing the Dream Image
Spring 2024
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Would you like to create a “continuous dream” for your reader lit up by color? From fashion, food, nature, art, and even Tarot, writers use color in surreal and surprising ways to bring their work alive. We’ll read and write through a dazzling palette to evoke the dream image. Through techniques such as synesthesia and colorata, you may discover your own blue rose. Students will be encouraged to keep a dream journal.
Expect a bouquet of fresh drafts to bloom from our work together.
Writing the Strange:
6 Weeks, 6 Senses
Spring 2022, Spring 2024
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In this creative writing workshop, we will address two common pitfalls: abstraction and cliches. Using Mary Karr’s essay Sacred Carnality as a touchstone, students will alchemize abstraction by writing through the lens of one of the five senses each week: sight, smell, touch, sound, and taste. Then, we’ll level up by making those descriptions strange, transforming clichés into fresh and striking language. By defamiliarizing the five senses, students will evoke what some call the Sixth Sense: that intuitive feeling about the mood, atmosphere, psychology, or emotion of a person or place. We'll invoke the weird and wonderful, magical, fantastic, uncanny, surreal, and even the supernatural.
Writing the Weird:
4 Weeks, 4 Uncanny Creations
Fall 2023
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Winter and Fall 2024 at Writing Workshops
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Angels, ghosts, beasts, and monsters oh my! This is the shorter, themed, generative writing version (versus workshop) of Writing the Strange.
Writing Flash and Poetry
Spring 2023
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In this six week workshop, we will read and write the short form. We will examine popular non-fiction forms such as the hermit crab, epistolary, and lyric essay. We will also read flash fiction and poetry with all of our senses attuned to defamiliarization, whether that be surrealism, magical realism, the uncanny, or the fantastic.
Shapeshift Your Writing:
Using Form to Transform
Fall 2022
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In this creative writing workshop, we will mine six forms across genres for inspiration and explore why readers love them. Whether you’re generating your first draft or revising your tenth, experimenting with form can transform your writing. Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode, and Jerome Stern’s Making Shapely Fiction will be our touchstones.
Writing Ghosts:
Fall 2021
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What haunts you? In this class, we will explore ghosts as memory, both personal and cultural, and ghosts as metaphors for trauma. Ghosts can manifest as what the patriarchy calls "madness" as in Charlotte Perkin Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, desire as in Vernon Lee's works, or even joy as in Tori Amos' Happy Phantom. Anything goes with a ghost, which potentially makes them the ultimate muse.