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Off Campus Writers' Workshop - OCWW

Hannah Gamble - "Moves" to Spice Up Your Writing: Using the Absurd to Convey Emotional Truths

  • January 18, 2018
  • 9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Winnetka Community House, 620 Lincoln Ave., Winnetka, IL

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Hannah Gamble

"Moves" to Spice Up Your Writing: Using the Absurd to Convey Emotional Truths

Q: How can absurdity lead our readers to genuine emotional experiences in our writing?

A: Via various kinds of unpredictability, the Absurd is able to short-circuit the reader's defenses and ultimately bestow an experience of emotional truth. Absurdity employs methods such as sudden switches from maximalism to minimalism (as we'll see in a short story by Donald Barthelme and a poem by Thomas James); it vacillates between comedy and tragedy (exemplified in a creative memoir piece by Kelly Pearce); it rejects common uses of language (a poem by Jos Charles) and can move extremely slow (novella excerpts from Edward Mullany) to the point of using boredom as an altererd state.

Join Hannah Gamble and the OCWW for a craft talk which will include short writing exercises throughout!

Hannah Gamble is a poet, essayist, editor, and educator. Her first book, Your Invitation to a Modest Breakfast, won the National Poetry Series in 2011. In 2014 she received a Ruth Lilly/ Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg fellowship from The Poetry Foundation. You can find her writing on the Poetry Foundation website, and in magazines such as The BelieverjubilatFanzine, and the American Poetry Review.

9-9:30 AM registration and socializing
9:30-12 PM program

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