Five Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Tuesdays, May 19, 26, June 2, 9, and 16, 2026
7:00 - 9:00Pm ET (NYC Time)
$175 Paid Patreon Members / $195 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: In an effort to nurture real-time creative engagement and community-building amongst attendees, this course will not be recorded. Each week, the class will receive a detailed weekly recap, ideas for continuing in-class work, and related enrichments from the literary world and beyond.
“The duty of the writer is to remind us that we will die—and that we aren’t dead yet,” notes the poet Solmaz Sharif. This generative class is a mix of close reading, in-class writing, and critical conversation. Together, we will explore a range of literary forms, constraints, and creative approaches inspired by and related to death.
A close study of death is a close reading of life: what we hold most dear and how we spend our precious minutes. To that end, we will engage with narrative, lyric, and hybrid works by Joyelle McSweeney, Victoria Chang, Denise Riley, Martha Silano, and Elias Canetti as models for our own creative writing. Students will leave each session with new writing starts and a sense of self-exploration and artistic experimentation on and off the page with this greatest of mysteries.
“The artist must know—and (s)he must let us know—that there is nothing stable under heaven,” James Baldwin said. “The artist cannot and must not take anything for granted, but must drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.” Writing towards those deeper questions via the fertile instabilities of mortal existence is our quest.
No prior experience required, just a curious mind and a willingness to experiment. Students will be encouraged to write in any modality they wish, whether poetry or prose. Each week’s discussions and prompts will be flavored by our touchstone texts (provided by instructor):
Week 1: The Shape of Death: Victoria Chang’s “OBIT”
Week 2: Against Death: Elias Canetti’s “The Book Against Death”
Week 3: Time of Death: Denise Riley’s “Time Lived Without Its Flow”
Week 4: Death Styles: Joyelle McSweeney’s “Death Styles”
Week 5: The Surreality of Mortality: Martha Silano’s “Terminal Surreal: Poems”
Gabriela Denise Frank is a literary artist, editor, arts educator, and winner of the Fern Academy Prize. Her work has appeared in BOMB Magazine, Poet Lore, EcoTheo Review, Chicago Review, Epoch, DIAGRAM, Northwest Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. The author of "How to Not Become the Breaking" (Gateway Literary Press), she serves as creative nonfiction editor of Crab Creek Review.
Images by Gabriela Denise Frank.
Five Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Tuesdays, May 19, 26, June 2, 9, and 16, 2026
7:00 - 9:00Pm ET (NYC Time)
$175 Paid Patreon Members / $195 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: In an effort to nurture real-time creative engagement and community-building amongst attendees, this course will not be recorded. Each week, the class will receive a detailed weekly recap, ideas for continuing in-class work, and related enrichments from the literary world and beyond.
“The duty of the writer is to remind us that we will die—and that we aren’t dead yet,” notes the poet Solmaz Sharif. This generative class is a mix of close reading, in-class writing, and critical conversation. Together, we will explore a range of literary forms, constraints, and creative approaches inspired by and related to death.
A close study of death is a close reading of life: what we hold most dear and how we spend our precious minutes. To that end, we will engage with narrative, lyric, and hybrid works by Joyelle McSweeney, Victoria Chang, Denise Riley, Martha Silano, and Elias Canetti as models for our own creative writing. Students will leave each session with new writing starts and a sense of self-exploration and artistic experimentation on and off the page with this greatest of mysteries.
“The artist must know—and (s)he must let us know—that there is nothing stable under heaven,” James Baldwin said. “The artist cannot and must not take anything for granted, but must drive to the heart of every answer and expose the question the answer hides.” Writing towards those deeper questions via the fertile instabilities of mortal existence is our quest.
No prior experience required, just a curious mind and a willingness to experiment. Students will be encouraged to write in any modality they wish, whether poetry or prose. Each week’s discussions and prompts will be flavored by our touchstone texts (provided by instructor):
Week 1: The Shape of Death: Victoria Chang’s “OBIT”
Week 2: Against Death: Elias Canetti’s “The Book Against Death”
Week 3: Time of Death: Denise Riley’s “Time Lived Without Its Flow”
Week 4: Death Styles: Joyelle McSweeney’s “Death Styles”
Week 5: The Surreality of Mortality: Martha Silano’s “Terminal Surreal: Poems”
Gabriela Denise Frank is a literary artist, editor, arts educator, and winner of the Fern Academy Prize. Her work has appeared in BOMB Magazine, Poet Lore, EcoTheo Review, Chicago Review, Epoch, DIAGRAM, Northwest Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. The author of "How to Not Become the Breaking" (Gateway Literary Press), she serves as creative nonfiction editor of Crab Creek Review.
Images by Gabriela Denise Frank.
