Feb
2
2:00 PM14:00

The Tangled History of Elephants in Entertainment

Explore the dark history of elephants in show business

For centuries humankind’s uses for animals were primarily limited to food, clothing, and labor—and then in the 19th century the use of exotic creatures for spectacle exploded. Perhaps none loomed larger in the American imagination than the elephants captured in Africa and Asia and shipped to the United States for entertainment. Mammoth stars such as Jumbo, Topsy, Alice, and Mary, were paraded by showmen such as P.T. Barnum and his infamous rival Adam Forepaugh, but the public’s “love” was often the death of them.
Today, as elephant populations have faced significant declines over the last century, Dawn Raffel revisits the history of sideshow spectacles and curiosities that continue to shape our relationship with these magnificent animals.

This free event is at the New York Public Library, 42 St and 5th Avenue. Register here

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Sep
12
to Oct 3

History in Literary Fiction & Memoir

Four Tuesdays from 7-9 PM, offered by the Center for Fiction via Zoom.

This workshop is for anyone weaving historical and archival research into fiction, memoir, and hybrid work. How do you handle the unknowns, the “holes,” the people and perspectives missing from the records? Where might you find surprising information, beyond the reach of Google? How do you avoid an information dump and make the work sing? How closely must you hew to the facts in search of the deeper truths? We will share some tools and insights, and will discuss works in progress. More information and registration here.

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Mar
10
to Mar 11

AWP Offsite Reading

The Underbelly, Seattle

Hosted by Independent Press Sagging Meniscus and International Arts Magazine Exacting Clam. Readers include Dawn Raffel, Jeff Chon, Hayan Charara, Emily Pérez, Matt Schumacher, Jeanine Walker, Dan Tremaglio, Elizabeth Cooperman, Greg Bem, Johnny Horton, and Thomas Walton.
It will be happy hour and there will be flambée!

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Jun
11
2:00 PM14:00

The Art of Compression (Flash Fiction Boot Camp)

What can a writer learn from compression? In a word, everything. Short works allow us to examine in a granular way how we make art out of language. Every great work, no matter its length, issues out of precision–of language, of structure, of vision and voice. In the first session, we’ll discuss sentence-making, voice, and structure, with specific examples, in an interactive format. We’ll end with a few prompts from which to chose. In the second session, we’ll share work that we’ve created, look at strategies for refining the work (including titles), and consider the ways that short pieces can be layered into longer narratives. The door is open to innovation and suggestion, to language, to mystery and to surprise.

Register here

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Jan
26
to Mar 9

Writing The Story That Only You Can Tell

This Wednesday evening class is offered via Graver Good’s Impracticum Series and applies applies a granular, analytical attention to sentence-making, composition, and editing, while surfacing students’ deeper layers of creative consciousness through principles of yoga and meditation. For more information or to register, please go here.

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