Writing Workshops

Exploring Lyric Research: Cultivating Obsession to Inform a Narrative with Makenna Goodman (Sold Out)

$395

6 Sessions

Out of stock

Once a week Thursdays, 7:00 pm EDT - 9:00 pm EDT July 29 to September 2, 2021

Online via Zoom

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This workshop has reached its capacity. Please click here to join the waitlist.

Obsession is about interest and paying close attention. To fixate on a theme, a person, an idea, a theory—and then project our own desires on it as if upon a screen—is a form of research. When we elevate these obsessions or points of entry beyond “the personal” and create the space to unravel it through language—that is lyric research.

In this workshop we will explore our obsessions and/or preoccupations to develop a narrative thread that will help us refine how we write and what we focus on. We will begin by talking, by reading, and discussing as a group. We will focus our energy on something specific, using it as a thread to follow. We will write, we will read aloud, we will discuss other media and stories we consume and in general, gather all our material from the fabric of our daily lives, to bring the unconscious into presence. We will pick up each piece of our research, lay it out on a table, pick it up and look at it from all sides, put it down again, make new arrangements. We will experiment with form and we will make our own rules.

Come prepared to talk about what obsesses you, but be prepared to surprise yourself by what that unearths. It may be far from what you expect.

All Levels
Capacity: 12

This workshop will take place online via Zoom.

Led by

Makenna Goodman

Makenna Goodman

Makenna Goodman is the author of The Shame, which was named a Harvard Review Favorite Book of 2020, a White Review Recommended Read, a Refinery29 Best New Book, a Literary Hub Recommended Read, a Bustle Most Anticipated Book, a Boston.com Book Club Pick, and more. Essays, interviews, and other writing have been featured in the New York Review of Books, Los Angeles Review of Books, the White Review, Electric Literature, Guernica, Literary Hub, Catapult, the Rumpus, Commonplace, the Paris Review, and forthcoming in the Harvard Review and BOMB. She is based in Vermont.

By Makenna Goodman

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The Shame

By Makenna Goodman

Published by Milkweed Editions

PURCHASE

Alma and her family live close to the land: they raise chickens and sheep, they make maple syrup. Every day Alma’s husband leaves for his job at a nearby college while she stays home with their young children, cleans, searches for secondhand goods online, and reads books by the women writers she adores. Then, one night, she abruptly leaves it all behind—speeding through the darkness, away from their Vermont homestead, bound for New York.

In a series of flashbacks, Alma reveals the circumstances and choices that led to this moment. The joys and claustrophobia of their remote life through the passing of each season. Her fears and uncertainties about motherhood. The painfully awkward faculty dinners. Her feelings of loneliness and failure. And her growing fascination with Celeste: the mysterious ceramicist and self-loving doppelgänger whose story begins as inspiration for Alma before turning into a powerful obsession.

A fable both blistering and surreal, The Shame is a propulsive, funny, and thought-provoking debut about a woman in isolation, whose mind—fueled by capitalism, motherhood, and the search for meaningful art—attempts to betray her.

About this series

Writing Workshops

We strive to make our classes the most inviting and rewarding available, offering an intimate environment to study with award-winning, world-class writers. Each class is specially designed by the instructor, so whether you’re a fledgling writer or an MFA graduate polishing your novel, you’ll find a perfect fit here.

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