WRITING THE BODY, taught by Marnie Goodfriend, September 21—October 19, 2022
WRITING THE BODY
Taught by Marnie Goodfriend
For beginner to advanced nonfiction writers
5 weeks
September 21—October 19
Zoom meetings 7 pm—8:30 pm ET on Wednesday 9/21, 9/28, 10/5, 10/12 and 10/19
$300 Class limit: 12
Questions: [email protected]
We all live in and through our bodies. Connection to the self and how we perceive, and are perceived, by the world around us is intrinsically tied to the vessel we reside in. Bodies can be political battlegrounds, sacred spaces, pleasure palaces, and crime scenes. As creative nonfiction or hybrid writers, how can we deepen our writing and understanding of ourselves by looking at the layered relationship we have with our bodies?
Open to new and seasoned writers, this five-week workshop will focus on points of pressure and alleviation to generate new material from different life experiences: eating, politics, health, intimacy, and positivity. We will read works by writers such as Roxane Gay, Chanel Miller, Melissa Febos, Natalie Lima and Seth Fischer to spark ideas about we can approach our own stories about the body and how we can reclaim ownship over them.
Each class will include exercises, writing prompts, and discussions of assigned readings. Participants will have weekly writing assignments and will receive feedback on their generative writing in a safe and encouraging environment.
Week One: Eating
What we feed our bodies with shapes the physical vessel we inhabit and affects the way we are seen in the world. Week one explores the stories we have about edible consumption, deprivation, diets, habits, and traditions. We’ll write and share our in-class writing prompt in a safe and supportive space and discuss ways to expand upon generative exercises.
Week Two: Illness and Injury
Our physical and mental maladies — and those that affect our loved ones — can scar and strengthen us. What can we learn from listening to our bodies’ first language? How do we answer back? Week two includes in-class writing, sharing, readings and conversations around it hurts — the very first words we learned to express pain.
Week Three: Sex
Sex can be an act of love, passion, obsession, power, abuse, ectasty, and pain. It’s also arguably one of the trickiest experiences to write about as it requires the same vulnerability necessary to express ourselves through touch. We will approach writing about sex with gentleness, honesty, and, depending on the experience, anger or humor. Week four will explore the often taboo subject and how we mine for the words to articulate our relationship to intimacy or the absence of it.
Week Four: The Body Politic
The choices we make for our bodies are hotly-debated issues that cause division among people and places. What do we do when our bodies become battlegrounds and personal choices are designated a public domain? How do we reclaim our bodies if we never had choices to begin with? Week four explores the body as a political instrument of power, persuasion and fear. We’ll write an impact statement about the body as a larger entity and our personal relationship to other people and institutions invading the skin we live in.
Week Five: Positivity
Our bodies work so hard for us, yet we often see them as a hindrance, a source of disappointment, shame, and frustration. How can we love our bodies and reauthor narratives with gentleness, love, and respect? Through in-class writing, we will approach a previously explored topic from an empathetic point of view.
Marnie Goodfriend is a writer, sexual assault advocate, and social practice artist. She is a 2018 VCCA fellow, recipient of the Jane G. Camp scholarship, and a 2016 PEN America fellow. Her advocacy work, Write to Healing, helps sexual assault survivors reauthor their experience through narrative healing. Marnie’s essays, articles, and other writing appear in TIME, Washington Post, The Rumpus, She Knows, Health, and elsewhere.
Read her essay “Fund What You Fear” on Cleaver.