6 sessions, Thursdays, January 30th to March 6th, 7-9 pm EST

online, 10 people max

$495

Enroll in this class.

In this creative writing workshop led by Dr. Erica Anzalone, we will address two common pitfalls: abstraction and cliches. Using Mary Karr’s essay Sacred Carnality as a touchstone, students will alchemize abstraction by writing through the lens of one of the five senses each week: sight, smell, touch, sound, and taste. Then, we’ll level up by making those descriptions strange, transforming clichés into fresh and striking language. By defamiliarizing the five senses, students will evoke what some call the Sixth Sense: that intuitive feeling about the mood, atmosphere, psychology, or emotion of a person or place. We’ll invoke the weird and wonderful, magical, fantastic, uncanny, surreal, and even the supernatural.

Classes will include reading and discussion, as well as writing prompts. Students will also have the opportunity to workshop one piece. They will receive feedback from their peers and Dr. Anzalone in a supportive community. Dr. Anzalone will also provide written feedback with an eye towards what’s working as a portal into further possibilities. This class is suitable for all genres and levels of writers.

Enroll in this class.

About the instructor

Erica Anzalone is the owner and founder of Witch Lit and brings with her two decades of teaching experience. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in poetry and a doctorate in English from UNLV, where she was awarded a Schaeffer fellowship. Her first book of poetry Samsara won the Noemi Press award. Poems from her second collection have been published in The Literary Review, Juked, Pangyrus, and elsewhere. Her latest creative non-fiction “Tarot for the Bardo” can be found in Autofocus Literary Review.