Hosted by Joy Sullivan.

Rewriting the Family

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” So goes the famous opening of Anna Karenina—was Tolstoy right? How might we imagine otherwise? Or define family differently? Or queer it? What is family in the 21st century? What does it mean to you? In this generative session, we’ll explore these and other complicated questions by discussing brief readings and attempting a few writing prompts. We’ll consider blood family alongside chosen family, familial memory and grief alongside the dream of new familial constellations. Poems by F. Douglas Brown, Wo Chan, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Victoria Chang, and others will inform our conversations and experiments.  

Please come to this session with a favorite (or least favorite!) family photograph, where family could mean chosen family or include animals or however you define it. We’ll use this photograph as a portal into writing.