The Course

Memory & Imagination

“Our memories . . . remain coiled within us, ready to spring and inform our lives with immediacy and our thoughts with urgency,” writes Rikki Ducornet in The Deep Zoo. In this generative class, we’ll write from prompts based on memory and the senses, with a special focus on the natural world, attempting to tap into our own “deep zoos”—touchstones of the imagination that we return to with curiosity and fearlessness and which we may transform into fiction. Ducornet, Borges, and Ackerman, among others, will offer insight into the process. The first five weeks will be devoted to discussion and writing short pieces from prompts. In the last three weeks, students will workshop one longer piece.

Duration: This course meets over eight consecutive Tuesdays from 2-4 pm ET, from May 7 through June 25.

Application period:  Apply by February 5. *Contact workshops@orionmagazine.org to see if any spots remain available. 

The Instructor

Anca L. Szilágyi is a fiction writer and essayist. She is the author of Daughters of the Air, which Shelf Awareness called “a striking debut from a writer to watch” and Dreams Under Glass (Lanternfish Press, 2022), which Buzzfeed Books called “a novel for our modern times.” Her writing appears in Orion, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Newsweek, among other publications. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Artist Trust, 4Culture, Hugo House, and Jack Straw Cultural Center; her work has been listed as a notable in Best American Essays 2023 and nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. Originally from Brooklyn, she has lived in Montreal, Seattle, and now Chicago, where she teaches creative writing.