This is a course that cares deeply about craft, and together we’ll study elements that make up good prose: character, setting, description, point of view, voice, dialogue, and narrative structure. This is also a course that centers the work of LGBTQIA+ writers, such as Dorothy Allison, Ari Banias, Roxane Gay, Randa Jarrar, Carmen Maria Machado, Torrey Peters, and Tommy Pico. Through exercises and conversations, we’ll go beyond the rules of the traditional form and make room for queerness across genres. Weekly writing exercises and activities will allow you to develop your own work in a supportive environment, and we hope to offer a Queer Writing Part II class in the future that will be workshop-based. While this class is designed to center LGBTQIA+ perspectives, all writers are welcome.
Eliana Ramage is a Cherokee Nation citizen born and raised in Nashville, where she works with youth in college access at a non-profit. She received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2018, and holds an MA in creative writing from Bar-Ilan University and a BA in English literature from Dartmouth College. Her stories and essays have appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal, The Baltimore Review, CRAFT, and the anthologies All the Women in My Family Sing and Re(Sisters). She is at work on her first novel.
"Eliana is so positive and encouraging, and I found myself reenergized in my writing practice outside of class. She's extremely knowledgeable of the craft and I appreciated all of her insights."
