At the end of a relationship—platonic, romantic, somewhere in between—there are your feelings about what happened and then there's the Truth of the matter. How do we come to the page honest, even when our heart might still be tender? How do we remain transparent about the events that transpired without going full tabloid? And how can we write something singular about our experience when so much has already been said about what it feels like to have loved and lost?
For each session of this workshop we will read and discuss 3-4 published pieces—a mix of short memoir, personal essay and craft essays—and dive into generative exercises that use the techniques we've gleaned from reading writers we admire. There will be an opportunity to share your work at the beginning and/or end of each session. The last two sessions will be reserved for workshopping; each student will submit to the workshop once for written and verbal feedback. We will read writing from Melissa Febos, Julia Koets, Michele Morano, Alden Jones, Akwaeke Emezi, Hanif Abdurraqib, Kaitlyn Greenidge, and others. This workshop is for writers with all levels of experience who are interested in writing about a past love.
Minda Honey’s (she/her) essays on politics and relationships have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and Longreads. Her work is featured in “Burn It Down: Women Writing About Anger”, “A Measure of Belonging: Writers of Color on the New American South”, and “Sex and the Single Woman: 24 Writers Reimagine Helen Gurley Brown's Cult Classic.”
She is the editor of Black Joy at Reckon — the newsletter has nearly 60K subscribers. She was the director of the BFA in Creative Writing program at Spalding University, a relationship advice columnist for LEO Weekly in Louisville, Kentucky, and founder of the capsule project, TAUNT, an alt-indie publication for Louisville that elevated the voices of the unaccounted during the height of the pandemic and ended in late 2021. Her debut memoir, THE HEARTBREAK YEARS (Little A, October 2023), is a hilarious and intimate portrait of a Black woman finding who she is and who she wants to be, one bad date at a time.
"Minda is such a great teacher! The readings, discussions, and exercises were expertly crafted. Teaching and learning via Zoom isn’t easy, but Minda still created a warm and welcoming classroom feeling, even among a group of socially distanced Zoomers. This class was amazing and I hope to The Porch will offer many many more classes with Minda!"
"Minda Honey teaches you how to write about life from a place of healing--you become a better writer and a better human."
"Minda is super relatable while providing great content. I feel empowered to speak my truth. I think it is also important that she clearly approaches the subject matter through a black femme lens and is unapologetic about it."
