4 sessions, Tuesdays, October 13 to November 3rd, 6:30-9pm EST
online, 9 students max
Sliding Scale: $210 to $275, please pay as much as you can afford
If this scale is too great a financial burden, please contact us—we can make it work!
Enroll for this class.
The body is a notoriously difficult subject to write about, and often, the language available to articulate our experiences can feel restricted to a clinical or medical context.
In this short course and workshop, students will explore new ways to write about the illness, disability, or the body through experimental poetry and prose, moving beyond or subverting a medical perspective. Students will be given a variety of generative prompts, encouraging them to consider how a social, political, emotional, or personal lens interacts with narratives about the body. We’ll read work by writers doing innovative work around the body, illness, and disability, including Torrin A. Greathouse, Saou Ichikawa, Johanna Hedva, Ilya Kaminsky, and more, studying the craft behind them. Each student will have the opportunity to workshop at least one piece in a supportive environment (note: some reading and responding to work ahead of time will be required).
The class is open to writers of any experience level with an interest in poetry, prose, or hybrid forms of writing. If you’re looking to discover a new approach to embodied writing, learn about experimental forms and language, or find new strategies to craft subversive narratives about the body, this class is for you.
Enroll for this class.
About the Instructor
Mary Kate McGrath is a writer, educator, and disability advocate based in Los Angeles. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in the Iowa Review, the Indiana Review, Tin House, the Florida Review, and elsewhere. Her short story "Gorgeous Vibrations" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has an MFA in fiction from Boston University, where she was a Leslie Epstein Global Fellow.
Student Testimonials from Past Writing Subversive Body Narrative Sessions
“Mary Kate is AWESOME! The class was spacious, rich, and well-paced.”
“Mary Kate was an excellent instructor! As many of the other writers in the class also had chronic illnesses/identified as disabled, Mary Kate was always open to accessibility and accommodations for all the writers involved. She championed each of the writers within the workshop space to write their best work, and provided thorough feedback and notes. The readings she picked truly were subversive in nature and the prompts accompanying them gave the class space to sharpen their skills. I would not hesitate to take another class with her!”
“Mary Kate provided amazing opportunities to connect, engage critically with work, write, and receive feedback from other folks sharing chronic illness and disability identities. I am so grateful I had the opportunity to take this class. Highly recommend.”
“Excellent class. It was everything I was looking for! Mary Kate gives such attentive, thoughtful feedback and assigns really interesting readings and prompts. The other students were amazing writers and careful readers. We need more classes like this. It was a great experience for my writing and my existence in the world.”
“Readings added depth and prompts were thought-provoking. I feel like I came out of the class with a draft near ready to submit for publication.”