Fictionalizing the Family Archives with Noelani Piters
[FOUR SESSIONS, Thursdays August 29, September 5, September 12, September 19, from 6-8pm PST, Online via Zoom ]
Tuition (payment instructions will be sent before class begins): $ 260 (early-bird registrants before August 8) $285 (after August 8)
*Please note KSW educational programming is focused primarily on BIPOC writers and artists. Space is limited. Payment information will be sent to all attendees before classes begin. Please email info@kearnystreet.org if you have any questions.
Course Description
What happens when we turn our attention to family and what our ancestors leave us? What is revealed when we reimagine shared history and that which we do not know? How can we honor the stories we inherit, while also incorporating our own perspectives?
In this four-part generative class, we will read, listen, and look closely at literary and visual work that engages family and heritage through innovative and surprising methods. Then, we will use our own family archives as a jumping-off point, drawing from a variety of inheritances, from photographs to oral histories to heirlooms and beyond. “Fictionalizing” in the context of this class is loose, allowing for emotional truths, hybrid explorations, and a sense of play to take the lead. We’ll experiment with literary devices, forms, and perspectives to create evocative writing that is rooted in the real. At the end of our time together, participants will leave with the beginnings of new drafts, one peer-workshopped piece, and a toolbox for navigating their family archives going forward.
Open to writers of all skill levels and genres. No prior creative writing experience is necessary to participate.
About the Instructor
Noelani Piters is a writer living in San Francisco, on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples. She was a 2024 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, a 2024 Disquiet Literary Prize Poetry Finalist, and a 2023 Molokai Arts Center Artist in Residence. She has received support from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and Kearny Street Workshop. Her work can be found in or is forthcoming from Poetry, The Offing, Epiphany Magazine, swamp pink, and Pleiades, among other publications. Through poetry, prose, and mixed media, she excavates identity, exploring the interconnectivity of place, heritage, food, belonging, mixedness, and family.