Beyond Cli-Fi with Outlandish: Black and Indigenous Nature Lit with Benje Williams

This group will take place in person and offsite at Outlandish, 722 Franklin Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11238. The ‘With Books’ option includes all titles required for this group at a 10% discount from our Bookstore.

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Meeting Dates:
1/10, 2/7, 3/6, 4/17
In Person at Outlandish

This reading group is co-presented by Outlandish in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a store reconnecting people of color with the outdoors.

Nature and place have always played a central role in literature and in human lives. Recently, genres like climate fiction and nature writing have emerged and become more dominant. Despite the profound presence of the natural world in Black lives throughout time—in the American South, in our ancestral African lineage, in our roles as farmers and caretakers of the land—authors of color are not commonly associated with nature or place-based writing. And yet, there is a wealth of Black and Indigenous tradition and writing that centers the natural world as place and character.

In this four-session reading group, we will explore four of these seminal efforts (three novels and one memoir), while using each reading as inspiration for our own writing.

We will discuss craft decisions each piece incorporates and engage with prompts as we conclude each session with optional free writing.

Participants are expected to have read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston before the first session.

• Session I: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Session II: Sula by Toni Morrison
• Session III: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
• Session IV: Poet Warrior by Joy Harjo

What to expect from this reading group: This will be a conversational and participant-driven learning environment. The hope is that participants will share openly and freely in order to learn from each other.