F201.
Permission to Dream: Students of Color in Creative Writing Workshops
Friday, March 25, 2022
1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
How do creative writing professors encourage students of color to dream on the page? How do they reconcile the act of storytelling with its problematic history of being dominated and defined, in many of its genres, by white males? In what ways is storytelling an act of resistance? Participants will answer these questions and also discuss the ways in which anti-racist pedagogy can be deployed in creative writing workshops in order to liberate the imaginations of students of color.
Participants
Gail Upchurch writes young adult/adult fiction and holds a PhD in creative writing from Binghamton University. A 2021 Tin House YA Scholar, she is an English professor at PG Community College. She is represented by Lucy Irvine of Peters Fraser and Dunlop Literary Agency and is currently on submission.
Brenda DeMartini-Squires, an associate professor at Dutchess Community College, has published work in The Sun, Confrontations, Paterson Literary Review, Minnesota Review, Kansas Quarterly, and Southern Indiana Review. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a PhD from the University of Missouri.
Keith O’Neill is a professor of English at SUNY-Dutchess, where he teaches creative writing and composition. His work has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Andromeda Spaceways Magazine, and Bewildering Tales.
Amina Henry is a Brooklyn-based playwright, adjunct lecturer, and arts educator with the Teachers & Writers Collaborative and the Hunts Point Alliance for Children. She is a graduate of Yale University and has an MA in performance studies (NYU) and an MFA in playwriting (Brooklyn College).
Racquel Goodison is an associate professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY. She has been a resident at Yaddo and the Saltonstall Arts Colony, as well as a recipient of the Astraea Emerging Lesbian Writer’s Grant and a scholarship to the Fine Arts Works Center.
