The Omniscient Mind

With Johanna Skibsrud

Sunday, November 3
2:30PM – 4:30PM
Online via Zoom
$25.00

Out of stock

Description

We’re often told, “write what you know!” but we don’t often pause to reflect on what that really means—or what kind of challenge that phrase extends to us as writers. Everything we know of the world—whatever we encounter of it through direct or mediated experience, as well as everything we’ve ever dreamed about, feared, or imagined—can become the material for writing. Whether we’re working on a science fiction novel or an autobiography, thinking of knowledge and experience in these broad terms may enrich our writing and expand our ways of knowing both ourselves and the world around us. This workshop will propose numerous creative exercises with an emphasis on embodiment and play. The overall aim will be to build a concrete skill-set for increased attention to what we may not yet even realize we know.

Speakers

  • Johanna Skibsrud is a Giller Prize-winning Canadian writer working across multiple genres. Her recent work includes the poetry collection Medium (2024, Book*hug; shortlisted for the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award), two essay collections, Fool (Routledge 2023) and The Nothing That Is: Essays on Art, Literature, and Being (Book*hug 2019) and the novel Island (Hamish Hamilton Canada 2019; nominated for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic). Since 2023, Johanna has facilitated an ongoing, site-specific community art practice titled The Ephemeralization Project. The project has featured collaborations with (among others) The Pictou Antigonish Regional Library, The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project and The Grand Canyon Museum Collection. A professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Arizona, Johanna divides her time between Tucson, AZ and St. Joseph du Moine, Cape Breton.