What if I broke the rules? In this final auto-fiction Masterclass we’ll be looking at the most experimental forms of autofiction, such speculative, essayistic, sci-fi versions of the autobiographical story. Reading experimental, wild texts such as Danté’s 14th-century narrative poem The Divine Comedy, State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg and Michelle de Kresner’s Theory and Practice that she describes as a “hyperrealist novel, a novel that doesn’t read like a novel.”
Having recapped the history and defintion of autofiction, we’ll be plunging into all the inventive forms auto-fiction can take, involving a story that we could imagine happening to ourselves that we can tell by subverting many literary forms.
Our interactive class/workshop will combine:
- Exploring and understanding the history, writers and texts which are part of ‘autofiction’ from the experimental ‘I’, breaking the autobiographical pact, via psychoanalysis to autofiction as resistance.
- Learning techniques for blending truth and invention in service of autofiction work.
- We will do generative autofiction writing exercises which allow you to move from real life to auto-fiction without losing narrative control, through POV, voice, inventing new rules.
- The masterclasses will give you practical tools for creating distance from autobiographical material while retaining emotional honesty.
- We will discuss handling vulnerability, ethics, permission and truth
- A Q & A.
We’ll be giving ourselves the permission to experiment with form, with intention, care, and artistic freedom. The session will provide a supportive, rigorous space. This course is open to beginners and experienced writers, poets, essayists, novelists, and short story writers who want to discover autofiction.
Tickets
This event will be recorded for the purpose of sending to ticket holders who can’t make the event, and those who require the recording to meet their access needs. Tickets purchased after the event takes place will give access to the session recording for ten days after the session.
You can purchase an individual £30 ticket for this event, or a combination ticket for £75 which includes Susanna’s previous sessions in this series:
- 21st May | AutoFiction Introduction: The Bad Genre | £30
- 18th June | Autofiction, à la Française, and Writing Autofiction as Resistance
| £30
