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Meet THe Team
Kick off your Southern Festival of Books weekend with The Porch on Friday, where you’ll have a unique opportunity to learn from celebrated authors as they pass through Nashville before the festival officially begins! Stick around for the rest of the day to take more writing classes with Ruben Reyes Jr., Jeannie Vanasco, and Hannah Pittard.
Every image holds a secret story. In this workshop led by award-winning author Sheree Renée Thomas, students will learn how to unlock the hidden narratives within visual art and artifacts to spark new speculative fiction. We will examine how authors have drawn from diverse inspirations, from Nalo Hopkinson's folklore-infused tales to the Afrofuturist works of artists like Ellen Gallagher, Wangechi Mutu, Betye Saar, and more. We will develop techniques to translate visual details into compelling plots, characters, and settings. Through a series of guided writing exercises, you will transform static visuals into dynamic, living worlds. This class is for all fiction writers, whether you are writing fantasy, science fiction, or literary fiction.
For this class, we would use these free online sources for discussion and as writing prompts:
- Octavia E. Butler, "Amnesty"
- Nalo Hopkinson, "The Glass Bottle Trick"
- The art of Ellen Gallagher as a visual writing prompt
• In-Class Writing Lift: Light
• Homework: None
• Workshopping Drafts: None
Sheree Renée Thomas is the award-winning author of the collections, Mojorhythm, Nine Bar Blues: Stories from an Ancient Future; Sleeping Under the Tree of Life; Shotgun Lullabies: Stories & Poems, and the novel Marvel's Black Panther: Panther's Rage. She contributed to Marvel’s Legends comic book series with her debut comic, The World Is Not Ready featuring the Black Panther and Storm and has collaborated with artist Janelle Monae on the novelette, “Timebox Altar(ed),” in the New York Times bestselling collection, The Memory Librarian and Other Stories of Dirty Computer. Recognized for contributions to the genre, Thomas is a twice-honored Hugo Award Finalist, a three-time World Fantasy Award Winner for the groundbreaking anthologies, Dark Matter and Africa Risen, and is the recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Award, the Ignyte Ember Award, and the Locus Award. She has been honored with fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the Millay Colony of the Arts, Bread Loaf Environmental, and more. Her work is featured in The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (1945-2010) edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer and other Year’s Best volumes. She is the Editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and is the Associate Editor of Obsidian.
Sheree is new to The Porch. Welcome!
