Writing Workshops

Overcoming Silences: Writing Stories Inspired by Our Lives with Bushra Rehman

$175

2 sessions

Out of stock

Saturday & Sunday 11:00 am EDT - 2:00 pm EDT July 12 to July 13, 2025

Online via Zoom

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Writing from life can be a tricky business. There are people to protect, faulty memories of events, and the pitfalls of self-censorship and self-aggrandizement. This workshop recognizes that our lives are too rich not to write about, and our imaginations too strong to ignore.

My goal is to bring a joyful approach to our work: Students will engage in a variety of writing exercises to learn tools and techniques, including oral storytelling, drawing, map-making, and fragmented writing, to approach their stories from multiple perspectives. We will also discuss literary elements such as character, dialogue, setting, fragmented narrative, and story arc, and draw on memory and its gaps to parse out the truth and lies of our lives. Using the seeds of our lives as starting points, we will explore how to grow these seeds into stories and books.

Course Outline:

Day One
- Introductions: Populating the Literary Space
- Oral Storytelling: Discussion and Exercise
- Fragments, Process, and Form: Discussion and Exercise
- Overcoming Silences: Discussion
Day Two
- Let’s Talk: Dialogue: Discussion and Exercise
- Using Narrative Time to Create Rhythm: Discussion and Exercise
- Writing And Mapmaking: Discussion and Exercise
- How to Find Time to Write: Discussion

Levels: Introductory / Intermediate

This course is held online via Zoom.

Upcoming Event: RSVP today for On Craft: Giving Yourself Permission to Write Your Story, held in person and livestreaming, featuring authors Elissa Altman (Motherland, Poor Man’s Feast), Wendy C. Ortiz (Excavation), and Emily Bernard (Black is the Body).

Led by

Bushra Rehman

Bushra Rehman

Bushra Rehman’s novel Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, a modern classic about being Muslim and queer was noted as a Best Book and Editor’s Choice by the New Yorker, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Ms. magazine among others. Rehman is co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism and author of the poetry collection Marianna’s Beauty Salon and the novel Corona, chosen by the NY Public Library as one of its favorite books about NYC. As a teaching artist, Rehman has led writing workshops for Poet’s House, Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Urban Word NYC, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. She created and facilitates the community-based workshop Two Truths and a Lie: Writing Memoir and Autobiographical Fiction.

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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