Qartography

I moved to Portland eight (!) years ago, and soon after, I took my first writing workshop with Lidia Yuknavitch and Domi Shoemaker at Corporeal Writing. Corporeal cracked my writing wide open, and opened me up in turn to a wonderful community of writers. Eventually I got hired on to work with Lidia and Domi and the rest of the Corporeal Writing squad. Lidia invites us all to pick our own job titles, so I'm the Navigator, named after one of the spice-soaked beings who bend space and time to facilitate interstellar travel in Frank Herbert's Dune, getting people where they need to be. And I love what we do at Corporeal, hosting writing workshops that buck the norm of the top-down guru method. We try to meet writers where they are, in their voice, instead of telling them how to do it "right."

I've dipped my toe into teaching writing a bit through Corporeal, mostly facilitating classes that utilize videos of Lidia talking about different writing concepts. I've wanted to cook up my own class for a while, though, despite the heavy case of impostor syndrome I carry because I haven't (traditionally) published a book. But lately Lidia and our brilliant creative director, Janice Lee, really pushed me to get a class on the schedule before the end of 2023.

So here it is! Beginning November 4th, for four weeks, I'll be teaching Qartography: Mapping the Queerness of Our Lives through Corporeal Writing.

On ancient maps the mysterious, borderless world beyond the sight of explorers and colonizers was often represented by monstrous creatures—hydras, sirens, kraken, living islands with deadly fangs. In video games, the “fog of war” obfuscates the landscapes we haven’t yet tread, hinting at danger and treasure in equal measure. Inside ourselves, there are always new shadowy nooks to discover.

Queer people have walked this world for as long as human beings have. But often—though not always and certainly not in every culture—they’ve been pushed to the shadows, colored and portrayed as monsters by the dominant heteronormative societies around them.

In this workshop, LGBTQ+ writers are invited to become cartographers of their own queerness. What is the emotional history of queerness in your body? What is the geographical history of your queer movement through the world? What is the ecology of our queerness, how does it entangle with the natural world? What fog of war lies around us, what mysterious oceans do we have yet to sail across?

We will ask, and perhaps answer, these and other questions over the course of four weeks together. So many writers before us (Audre Lorde, Justin Torres, Melissa Febos, to name but a few) have each mapped their own queer nexus of space and time, and we’ll look to their work for guidance along the way. Each week we’ll engage writing portals to generate new work that will hold the seeds of further creative opportunities within it.

There will be an optional-but-recommended weekly Zoom meeting.

If that sounds interesting to you, that's awesome! Or, if you think you know someone who might want to take it, please send them the info. We're gonna keep it intimate in size and there's a sliding scale for tuition:

$350 Partner

$275 Supporter (Note: this reflects the “real” value of this course.)

$200 Companion

$150 Friend

We are always able to set up payment plans to break any of these tuition fees into smaller monthly payments. Also, a limited number of scholarships are available for anyone needing further financial assistance. Please email Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com for more info, or if you are feeling challenged in any way by the financial requirements of participation.

I'm really excited for this class, excited for all the reading I'm going to be doing between now and November with Qartography in mind, and excited for all the writing I'm going to get to read once the course is in progress and folks start responding to the writing portals I'm cooking up. There will be nesting dolls!

Here's the link to the class one more time: Qartography.

It would be cool to see some friendly faces there. ;)

Until next time,

I remain,

Daniel