The Shed: Real and Imagined
The shed is where the animals live. That’s a statement of fact and also a saucy metaphor, full of possibilities. The shed, architecturally speaking, is the adjunct to the home, the extension of domesticity but also its excess. As a verb, shed describes the release of that which is outgrown or unnecessary or pent up. Sometimes to shed is to protect, in the way that a raincoat sheds water. In this prose-based, generative workshop we will explore the theme of home by working through its annex, the shed, and examine moments of shedding for the messiness and growth that feed our work with complexity, honesty, and beauty.
Beth Piatote is a writer, scholar, and Indigenous language activist. She is the author of two books: Domestic Subjects: Gender, Citizenship, and the Law in Native American Literature (Yale 2013) and The Beadworkers: Stories (Counterpoint 2019) and many essays, short stories, and poems in journals and anthologies, including PMLA, American Quarterly, Kenyon Review, World Literature Today, POETRY, and others. Her full-length play, Antíkoni, had its world premiere in Los Angeles and has been translated into Japanese. She is dedicated to the study of Nez Perce language and literature, and supports Indigenous language revitalization projects, including the Indigenous Poetics Lab that she created at UC Berkeley. She is an associate professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Director of the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley. She is Nez Perce enrolled at Colville.