Six Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Sundays, January 10 -February 14, 2027
1pm - ? ET (NYC Time)
$180 Paid Patreon Members / $190 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
Medieval times saw the popularity of bestiaries—illuminated compendia of exotic and imaginary animals whose histories were often accompanied by moral lessons. Our animalian inspirations and relationships have shifted in the centuries since. J. M. Coetzee observes, “There is a temptation to seek in animals what is easiest for human beings to sympathize or empathize with, and consequently to favor those species which for one reason or another seem to be almost human in their mental and emotional processes.”
In this generative writing class, we will move beyond moralizing, exoticizing, and anthropomorphizing our more-than-human kin through practices of close reading, reflection, imagination, and attention. Each session will feature a central text related to animals—real and imagined, uncanny and fascinating—whose craft choices inspire us to take creative leaps through in-class writing prompts. Attendees will leave this hands-on class with a portfolio of starts that can be further developed at home.
By the end, we’ll each have drafted bestiaries of our own!
All readings provided by instructor. No prior experience or skills required except for an open mind and willingness to experiment on the page.
CLASS SCHEDULE
Week 1. Unlikely Familiars: “Frog” by Anne Fadiman
Week 2. Dead Animals: “Song” and “Dead Doe” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Week 3. That Which Skitters: “Late Autumnal with Cockroach” by Erin Belieu, “American Cockroach” by Robyn Schiff, “To the Jewel Wasp” by Robyn Schiff
Week 4. Therianthropy: “Werewolf Goals” by Douglas Kearney
Week 5. Wild Game: “Heathen” by David Naimon
Week 6. I Do Bird Sequence: Excerpts from Kim Hyesoon’s “Phantom Pain Wings”
Gabriela Denise Frank is a transdisciplinary artist, editor, educator, and winner of the Fern Academy Prize. The author of How to Not Become the Breaking, her writing and visual art appear in BOMB Magazine, Channel, Alta, Fairy Tale Review, EcoTheo Review, The Rumpus, and "No Contact: Writers on Estrangement." Off the page, her story-based installations expand the accessibility, definition, and experience of literary art in everyday life.
A born mudlarker, Gabriela’s body of work explores spiritual philosophy, mortality, decay, the more-than-human realm, and Necropastoral transformation. Two central inquiries energize her body of work: how humans forge belief systems by which we navigate mortal existence and how we dare to love anything in a world where everything dies. She hails from Detroit and resides on the ancestral lands and waters of the Dxʷdəwʔabš (Duwamish) and Bəqəlšuł (Muckleshoot) peoples.
Six Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Sundays, January 10 -February 14, 2027
1pm - ? ET (NYC Time)
$180 Paid Patreon Members / $190 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
Medieval times saw the popularity of bestiaries—illuminated compendia of exotic and imaginary animals whose histories were often accompanied by moral lessons. Our animalian inspirations and relationships have shifted in the centuries since. J. M. Coetzee observes, “There is a temptation to seek in animals what is easiest for human beings to sympathize or empathize with, and consequently to favor those species which for one reason or another seem to be almost human in their mental and emotional processes.”
In this generative writing class, we will move beyond moralizing, exoticizing, and anthropomorphizing our more-than-human kin through practices of close reading, reflection, imagination, and attention. Each session will feature a central text related to animals—real and imagined, uncanny and fascinating—whose craft choices inspire us to take creative leaps through in-class writing prompts. Attendees will leave this hands-on class with a portfolio of starts that can be further developed at home.
By the end, we’ll each have drafted bestiaries of our own!
All readings provided by instructor. No prior experience or skills required except for an open mind and willingness to experiment on the page.
CLASS SCHEDULE
Week 1. Unlikely Familiars: “Frog” by Anne Fadiman
Week 2. Dead Animals: “Song” and “Dead Doe” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Week 3. That Which Skitters: “Late Autumnal with Cockroach” by Erin Belieu, “American Cockroach” by Robyn Schiff, “To the Jewel Wasp” by Robyn Schiff
Week 4. Therianthropy: “Werewolf Goals” by Douglas Kearney
Week 5. Wild Game: “Heathen” by David Naimon
Week 6. I Do Bird Sequence: Excerpts from Kim Hyesoon’s “Phantom Pain Wings”
Gabriela Denise Frank is a transdisciplinary artist, editor, educator, and winner of the Fern Academy Prize. The author of How to Not Become the Breaking, her writing and visual art appear in BOMB Magazine, Channel, Alta, Fairy Tale Review, EcoTheo Review, The Rumpus, and "No Contact: Writers on Estrangement." Off the page, her story-based installations expand the accessibility, definition, and experience of literary art in everyday life.
A born mudlarker, Gabriela’s body of work explores spiritual philosophy, mortality, decay, the more-than-human realm, and Necropastoral transformation. Two central inquiries energize her body of work: how humans forge belief systems by which we navigate mortal existence and how we dare to love anything in a world where everything dies. She hails from Detroit and resides on the ancestral lands and waters of the Dxʷdəwʔabš (Duwamish) and Bəqəlšuł (Muckleshoot) peoples.
