Forms & Features with L. Renée

All are welcome to a poetry discussion and creative writing workshop, “Writing Into Your Family Archive Through Poetry,”  created and led by L. Renée.

We all have inheritances. For some of us, these inheritances may be tangible—journals, quilts, recipes, letters, jewelry, garments, photographs, or even the gift of roaming the same land our ancestors once walked. For others, inheritance is found in memory—stories told (or overheard) about elders or family rituals like putting blankets over windows during thunderstorms

In this generative workshop, “Writing Into Your Family Archive Through Poetry,” we will explore the tangible and intangible forms of what we’ve inherited, discover craft elements/strategies to write about these inheritances by reading model poems, and generate new work from writing prompts. By the end of our time together, it is my hope that you lean into the silences and omissions—both intentional and unintentional—that come with families and family histories and imagine possibilities for, or stumble upon revelations from, these relationships. This workshop is open to writers at every stage of their writing journey. We will all learn from each other.

L. Renée is a poet and nonfiction writer living in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where she works as Assistant Director of Furious Flower Poetry Center and Assistant Professor of English at James Madison University. Nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net and two Pushcart Prizes, her work has been published in Obsidian, Tin House Online, Poetry Northwest, the minnesota review, and elsewhere. The granddaughter of proud Black Appalachians, she won the international 2022 Rattle Poetry Prize and Appalachian Review’s Denny C. Plattner Award, among others. A recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem Foundation and the Watering Hole, L. Renée also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University, where she was Nonfiction Editor of the Indiana Review and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University, where she was a Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Moore Fellow. She has received support from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Inc., Oak Spring Garden Foundation, The Peter Bullough Foundation, The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Monson Arts, Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference, and others. lreneepoems.com

Registration is required for this event. To allow for more poets to participate in workshops with Visiting Teaching Artists, participants will be registered for the May workshop with L. Renée or the June workshop with Giulia Ottavia Frattini, but not both workshops. This program is for adult participants, aged 18 and older.

Closed captioning is available via Google Meet. We are happy to provide ASL interpretation. Please let us know at least one week in advance, if possible, if you would benefit from an ASL interpreter in attendance. If you would benefit from any other accessibility measures, please contact us by emailing [email protected]. Learn more about Google Meet’s built-in accessibility features here.