TRANS (Is Not An Abbreviation)
Writing Transgender Characters through the lens of the body
taught by Claire Rudy Foster
4 Zoom Sessions
January 4, 11, 18, 25, 8-10 pm ET
$200
Class limit: 12
Questions: [email protected]
This workshop will discuss how to write about transgender characters through the lens of the body. Transgender bodies are vilified, objectified, fetishized, and punished. How do we write about trans joy, pleasure, and freedom? Writers will generate body-specific pieces of imagined or experienced memoir and learn about how to create transgender characters that avoid cliched, harmful tropes. Cisgender students are asked to read a sensitivity statement before attending.
AFTERBURN
Cleaver Poetry Reviews Editor 
Sydney Tammarine’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, LIT, Pithead Chapel, The Missing Slate, and other journals. She is the co-translator of a book of poems, The Most Beautiful Cemetery in Chile. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University and teaches writing at Virginia Military Institute. She has led workshops at The Ohio State University, Hollins University, Otterbein University, and at high schools, including as Writer-in-Residence at Appomattox Regional Governor’s School. She serves as flash and creative nonfiction editor for Cleaver.
Lise Funderburg’s latest book is Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents, a collection of all-new work by twenty-five writers, which Publishers Weekly deemed a “sparkling anthology” in its starred review. Previous books include the memoir, Pig Candy: Taking My Father South, Taking My Father Home, and the recently reissued collection of oral histories, Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity. Her work has been published in the New York Times, TIME, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Nation, MORE, Chattahoochee Review, Oprah Magazine, and Prevention. Lise has been awarded residencies at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, MacDowell, Thurber House, and Blue Mountain, among others, and she won a Nonfiction Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania and teaches at the Paris Writers’ Workshop.
Lucy Spelman is a board-certified zoo and wildlife veterinarian with degrees from Brown University and the University of California at Davis. During her tenure as the first woman and youngest person to head the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, she brought two giant pandas to the US from China and launched a major renovation plan. She worked as a consultant for Animal Planet before moving to central Africa to run the field program for the Gorilla Doctors. Inspired by the many connections between the arts and sciences, she began teaching biology to students at the 
Sydney Tammarine’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, LIT, Pithead Chapel, The Missing Slate, and other journals. She is the co-translator of a book of poems, The Most Beautiful Cemetery in Chile. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University and teaches writing at Virginia Military Institute. She has led workshops at The Ohio State University, Hollins University, Otterbein University, and at high schools, including as Writer-in-Residence at Appomattox Regional Governor’s School. She serves as flash and creative nonfiction editor for Cleaver.