The course: In this creative nonfiction workshop you will be invited to consider your own connections with nature and joy, knowing fully that both of these concepts engage their shadows in order to burst forth. We will be reading works by Ross Gay, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Julia Koetz, and others while we draft our own responses to the world that we encounter. The various encounters that we use will lead us to leap into deeper explorations of ourselves, our contexts, our environment, as well as its histories and complexities, can take the form of image journals, field notes, or the personal or lyric essay. Peer critique will see us engage our original writings in considerations of structure, voice, narrative, and surprise. Most importantly, we will push our writing into the various orbits of the genre, remembering the “creative” in the “creative nonfiction.”

The Instructor: Rajiv Mohabir is an Indo-Caribbean American author of three acclaimed poetry collections, The Taxidermist’s Cut, Cowherd’s Son, and Cutlish; a book of translation, I Even Regret Night; and his hybrid memoir, Antiman. He is winner of the 2015 Kundiman Prize, a 2015 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, a finalist for the 2017 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry, and has received fellowships from Voices of Our Nationʻs Artist foundation, Kundiman, The Home School, and the American Institute of Indian Studies language program. He received his MFA in Poetry and Translation from Queens College, CUNY, and his PhD in English from the University of Hawai`i. Rajiv is currently a professor at Emerson College. More at www.rajivmohabir.com.

Application period: Apply by April 15.

Duration: This class meets once a week over six consecutive Tuesday evenings from 5-8 ET.