This is a scent-free workshop. Please do not wear or bring any perfumes or scents, etc to the venue.

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When we seek to lift stories from our lives into provocative and transformative narrative, it is our work as writers to induct our readers into the fascinating, rich and unique worlds of our characters; no matter how common or translatable we may perceive or believe them to be. In turn, building compelling worlds for our characters to live in helps readers to understand their motivations and actions, makes visible their value systems, and brings energy to our stories by giving our readers a palpable understanding of the stakes.

Using interdisciplinary, interactive approaches that centre play and encourage experimentation, we will use the body, memory (including bio and ancestral), the environment, the archive and the imagination, to engage in an immersive exploration of the linguistic, social, political, cultural, internal and physical worlds of the characters that inhabit your stories. We will uncover the secret codes and languages, curious bodies, distinctive landscapes, nuanced dynamics, and emotional truths that shape your characters’ lives.

Development of skills in craft to:

• Turn the self and others into complex characters
• Create rich sensorial world
• Explore the way personal narratives and descriptive details are always
• Reflective/representative of and in conversation with the world(s) in which we live to generate one new short piece of that undergoes revision wherein these skills are practiced

Writer and interdisciplinary performer, mia susan amir has worked as an educator for 17 years. A writer of creative non-fiction, mia explores the way socio-political events are manifest inter-generationally in the spaces of the home and the body; the condition of narrative haunting that emerges individually, collectively, politically, and culturally when our stories go untold; what she calls Dybbuk Consciousness.

mia holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College Oakland. She teaches creative writing through The Story We Be (https://storywebe.wordpress.com/) and at Langara College. mia has been published on Digging Through the Fat and Lemonhound, and has performed her work across Canada and the States.