Benevolent Anarchy
Ursula K. Le Guin once said that, “anarchism is a necessary ideal.” She popularized anarchism in her work, and vaulted the concept of anarchism from the cultural ghetto into the mainstream of intellectual discourse. In this workshop, we’ll talk about what it means to dissemble social norms, structures, and expectations in fiction. We’ll explore the writer’s power and responsibility to dismantle the status quo in fiction. Then we’ll write in the space we’ve created between chaos and order.
Jamie Ford is the great-grandson of Nevada mining pioneer, Min Chung, who emigrated from China in 1865, where he adopted the western name “Ford,” thus confusing countless generations. Jamie’s debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, spent two years on the New York Times bestseller list and won the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. Having grown up in Seattle, he now lives in Montana where he’s on a never-ending search for decent dim sum.