Home is where we’re from, and what and who we’re from. Home can shape us beyond perception into who we are and who we become.
Toni Morrison once likened writers to the Mississippi River, which was redirected and often floods in its search for its original path. “Writers are like that: remembering where we were, what valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory—what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our ‘flooding’.
In this generative writing class, we will interrogate the power of place, and how we remember the places we’ve been and called home. We will think about “home” as location, emotion, people, things, but most importantly, home as narrative.
Using readings and class discussion, we will explore a variety of approaches to writing about home, and we will explore specific craft techniques that will form home on the page. Readings will include work by Hanif Abdurraqib, Dorothy Allison, Jesmyn Ward, Jaquira Díaz, Myriam Gurba, and Lacy Johnson. Students will leave the class with a toolbox full of techniques and approaches on writing about home, and writing on place.
Vanessa Mártir is a big-hearted, 1980s Brooklyn-raised bocona learning the heartbeat of silence in the countryside of upstate NY; an oil-and-water combination of imposter syndrome, ambition, procrastination, certainty, insecurity and drive. Vanessa writes essays, memoir and novels, is a wanna be poet & playwright, and the creator of the Writing Our Lives Workshop; the Writing the Mother Wound Movement, and most recently the Write Your Abortion Story class. Vanessa has been widely published including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Longreads, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, Aster(ix) Journal, and the New York Times' Bestselling anthology Not That Bad, edited by Roxane Gay, among others. She has partnered with Tin House and The Rumpus to publish WOL alumni, and with Longreads and NYU's Latinx Project to publish Mother Wound essays. She has also served as guest editor of Aster(ix) and The James Franco Review. When she's not writing or teaching, you can find Vanessa in her garden or hiking in an old growth forest. Find out more about her relentless belief in our stories at vanessamartir.com.
"Vanessa is one of the best writing teachers ever. I always learn so much from her, and feel so inspired."
"Vanessa Martir was an excellent leader for our class. She was warm and welcoming and inspiring. I felt her passion on the topic and her love for the craft."
"Vanessa added a lot of insight and allowed others to do the same. She was very personable, warm, and understanding."
