Right Yourself
To be alive is beautiful and terrible, and this inevitably means that destabilizing events are going to come along. Some of them may even disrupt your sense of yourself and your identity as a writer. This course, open to writers working in all genres, is a chance to focus on your writing life, goals, and unique powers. Daily writing prompts will challenge you to identify and double-down on your singular visions and voice, and encourage you to “right yourself” in alignment with the work you are given to do in this world. Why do you write? For whom do you write? What happens when you ignore your true compass—or more terrifying, when you don’t?
Beth Piatote is a writer of fiction, poetry, essays, plays, and scholarly works. Her 2019 mixed-genre collection, The Beadworkers: Stories, was longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and the PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection, and shortlisted for the California Independent Booksellers “Golden Poppy” Award for Fiction. Her play, Antíkoni, was selected for the 2020 Festival of New Plays by Native Voices at the Autry, and continues in development for stage; her poems, stories, and essays appear in numerous journals and anthologies. She is Nez Perce, enrolled with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, and a founding member of luk’upsíimey/North Star Collective, a group of Nez Perce writers and language activists. She is an associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.
Learn more at: https://complit.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/beth-piatote