Crafting Wild Poems and Soft Beasts

SPACE IS LIMITED. This workshop focused on prose and poetry will explore science fiction and horror as vehicles for self-expression. Throughout this workshop, participants will explore works by Black and Brown writers who have blurred the lines between the real, the scary, and the fictional. They will also begin to learn about the imagination as a tool for crafting a unique, liberating self amid oppression. Participants will ultimately work on crafting their own poems and stories, and identifying how imaginary perceptions of the world impact daily life.

This is a regenerative workshop where participants will read sci-fi and afro-futuristic work by authors past and present, and come out with their own newly crafted and revised piece of writing. Participants who took part in part one are invited to rejoin as we will be reading new texts from Elizabeth Acevedo, the collection Octavia’s Brood, and works by adrienne marie brown an Alok Vaid-Menon as well as read excerpts from screenplays like Netflix’s Stranger Things, HBO’s Lovecraft Country and the film Vampires vs. The Bronx. The purpose of the workshop will be to begin to see sci-fi and magic as tools to confront oppression faced by Black and Brown communities. Writers will also begin to embrace their own voice and inner wildness. 

Some of the texts we’ll be reading from include: Kindred by Octavia Butler, The Black Maria by Aracelis Girmay, Black Panther by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Stranger Things, Our Shadows Have Claws: 15 Latin American Monster Stories

This workshop series is sponsored in part by Poets & Writers.

About the instructor: 

Amanda Alcántara is a Caribbean writer, performer and journalist. She is the author of “Chula” (2019). Her creative writing and journalistic work has been featured in the anthology “Latinas: Struggles & Protests in 21st Century USA,” the poetry anthology "LatiNext" and several news publications. She is also a co-founder and previous editor of La Galería Magazine. In 2020, Alcántara won third place in Dominican Republic’s spoken word competition, Poxeo. In 2021, Alcántara began recording Spanish language audiobooks, starting with providing the voiceover for the translation of The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman. She recently moved to the Dominican Republic where she opened up a bookstore on the northern coast.