It’s another Hedgebrook team up! Sherri will be leading this online workshop as one of Hedgebrook’s VorTEXT retreats. This year’s focus is on getting back to basics and a better future. “The Octavia Notebooks” draw inspiration from Octavia Butler and Sherri’s own work with Enchantivism.
About the Workshop
Change. Every great story deals with it – how it happens, and how we– for better or worse– respond to it. But what makes for powerful fiction can also be a challenge in the real world. If you are like many writers, the constant change of the past few years, from the pandemic and the social/political landscape, affected your writing. Maybe it fired you up and changed the direction of a work-in-progress. Maybe it left you reeling and unable to write. Maybe a bit of both! We are still on the rollercoaster ride of our times, raising the question: how do we write in the face of constant change?
In 1993, Octavia Butler grappled with the specter of Change in her speculative fiction masterpiece Parable of the Sower. Set in 2024, Parable series proved prescient. In the face of mass unrest and a presidential candidate running under the slogan, “Make America Great Again,” Butler's protagonist, Lauren Olamina, develops a new belief system around a simple idea: God is Change. Through a series of journals, Lauren explores her belief that one can shape Change and thereby shape God.
In this generative workshop, we will tap into the idea of shaping Change. By gathering our worries, and tapping into our hopeful imagination, we will use journal keeping, dream tending, and utopian thinking to inform our writing, protect our hope, and plot to create better world. Using quotes from more Lauren Olamina’s journals, as well as Octavia Butler's own inspirational journaling, this workshop will offer you tools to support writers through the upheaval of the election season, the rising worries of the global landscape, as well as your own character’s journey within your writing. Suitable for all levels and genres.
How VorTEXT Retreats Work
Our VorTEXT intensive retreats suit writers at different levels of experience and phases in the writing process. The day begins with a chance for community connection during the half-hour Coffee Chat before the live writing workshop via Zoom. Writers are then encouraged and inspired to continue their writing on their own or in accountability groups, and the day wraps with a group share and structured feedback session facilitated by Hedgebrook staff. Writers also enjoy lovingly prepared care packages, mailed to your doorstep.