Seventeen Ways to Write About a Fish
How many ways can you write about one thing? This workshop will propel your imagination and offer experiments in form through a sequence of exercises devoted to a single subject: a fish, a rock, a blizzard, a paperclip. Think cross-fit for writers: lots of reps, but using different muscle groups, and possibly involving a tire. Resilience is built by staying with something for a long period of time, and endurance requires joy, wonder, and endless re-invention. Together we will practice seeing whole multifarious worlds in one small bit of matter. The goal of the workshop is to generate new material that will spawn and/or fortify new poems, stories, and essays–or just make your daily writing practice a lot more fun.
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 Fiction, 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 is continuing in development. She is currently an associate professor of Comparative Literature and Native American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also devoted to Nez Perce language and literature, and indigenous language revitalization more broadly; she currently writes with a collective of Nez Perce creative writers. Her current projects include a book of poems and a novel.