Deadline Aug 15 | Call for Participants: Writing Workshop with Bushra Rehman for CUNY students and staff


Students, faculty, and staff are invited to apply for a free 8-week Writing Workshop with Bushra Rehman: Two Truths and a Lie: Writing Memoir and Autobiographical Fiction

Application Deadline: Tuesday, August 15th, 2017, 11:59pm.

The Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY in collaboration with the Asian American Writers’ Workshop is pleased to announce a free 8-week course, Bushra Rehman’s Two Truths and a Lie: Writing Memoir and Autobiographical Fiction. The course will teach students the craft of writing memoir, as well as elements of autoethnography – a form of writing the self that locates personal experience within the larger forces of culture and society. Writing exercises and techniques will be used to help explore themes including race, education, caregiving, loss, social inequality and social justice. Every writer will have the opportunity to workshop one original piece. All levels of writers are welcome.The course will be taught by acclaimed poet and novelist, Bushra Rehman, and it will be held on Wednesday nights starting October 11th, 2017 at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.

All writers will receive a $50 MetroCard for their participation. Writing generated through the class will be considered for publication in a special journal issue or in an edited collection on writing personal narratives. The Center for Humanities will also organize a public reading/performance in which workshop participants will be invited to showcase their final works.

This writing workshop is organized by Grace M. Cho and Rose M. Kim as part of the Public Education and Racial Justice Mellon Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research.

Writing Workshop Details:

Time and Day: Wednesdays 6:00PM—8:00PM

Dates: October 11, October 18, October 25, November 1, November 8, November 15, November 29, December 6
*(Please note that attendance is required for all 8 classes of this free course.)

Location: Asian American Writers’ Workshop, 112 W. 27thSt. #600, New York, NY

Course cap: 12 students

Instructor Bio:

Bushra Rehman’s first novel Corona, a dark comedy about being South Asian American, was noted by Poets & Writers among 2013’s Best Debut Fiction and featured in LA Review of Books as a work of ground-breaking South-Asian American Literature. She co-edited the anthology Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism, one of Ms. Magazine’s “100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time.” Rehman’s first book of poetry Marianna’s Beauty Salon will be released by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2018 and her first Young Adult novel will be released by Tor/Macmillan in 2019. Rehman is creator of the writing workshop series Two Truths and a Lie: Writing Memoir and Autobiographical Fiction. She has taught writing for over 15 years at organizations including Teacher & Writers Collaborative, Urban Word NYC and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.

Who is Eligible: CUNY students, faculty, and staff, and College and Community Fellowship students and staff.

To apply: please fill out this google application form.

Application Deadline: Tuesday, August 15th, 2017, 11:59pm.

About Asian American Writers’ Workshop
Established in 1991, Asian American Writers’ Workshop is a national not-for-profit arts organization devoted to the creating, publishing, developing and disseminating of creative writing by Asian Americans–in other words, we’re the preeminent organization dedicated to the belief that Asian American stories deserve to be told.

About the Center for the Humanities
The Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY encourages collaborative and creative work in the humanities at CUNY and across the city through seminars, publications, and public events. Free and open to the public, our programs aim to inspire sustained, engaged conversation and to forge an open and diverse intellectual community.

For further questions, please contact chf@gc.cuny.edu