1 Session: Sunday, March 2
2:00-5:00pm ET
Megan Kamalei Kakimoto

20 students

Megan Kamalei Kakimoto is the Japanese and Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) author of the story collection Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare (Bloomsbury 2023), a USA Today national bestseller and the recipient of a HONOLULU Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, Joyland, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers and is an Affiliate Faculty in Fiction at Antioch University Los Angeles and a Lecturer in English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

For writers working with inherited or ancestral stories, the material can feel like both an incredible gift and an overwhelming burden. How does one honor the past while making space for contemporary concerns and interests? How do we write into those blurred lines, embracing the mythology, folklore, superstitions, and cultural histories we’ve inherited, while affording our passions and obsessions space on the page? I take both pride and pleasure in considering ancestral stories in conversation with contemporary ones, and this craft intensive will explore exactly that, as we discuss the responsibility of carrying forth these tales while inviting into the conversation both imagination as well as our own writerly obsessions. Through close examination of fiction by writers who are also working with ancestral tales, we will study their craft choices surrounding plot, point of view, character, and details, and we will take comfort in the company of artmakers communing with voices of the past.

This craft intensive will include close readings, small group discussions, and generative writing exercises participants can use to produce new work or engage with (and maybe re-see) their existing works in progress. Together, we will learn to write our way into existing mythologies, driven by the ideas, interests, and characters we simply can’t shake.

Workshop Highlights:

• Writers will have the opportunity to get honest about the challenges of committing ancestral stories to the page while receiving comfort and support in the communal nature of ancestral art-making.

• Writers will study fiction and nonfiction grounded in ancestral storytelling with close attention paid to character, point of view, detail, and plot.

• Writers will engage in generative writing exercises designed to support existing works in progress and/or spark new work, with the opportunity to share writing with the class.

One full and one partial scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, February 22.