Exploring Family Histories Through Creative Writing
An Interactive Workshop
Materials housed in both public archives and private family collections can provide important windows into the lives of our ancestors—and by extension, ourselves. For example, the poet Lauren Russell’s 2020 book, Descent, speaks into the gaps in the diary of her great-great-grandfather, a Confederate Captain, and imagines the voice of her great-great-grandmother, Peggy Hubert, whom he once enslaved. As we celebrate the 160th anniversary of Emancipation in Maryland, we will explore how to write with family artifacts and documents and into gaps in the archival record. Participants are asked to bring a historical object of inquiry (perhaps a journal, family heirloom, photograph, or letter). With this archival material as a starting point, Russell will guide participants through a series of creative exercises to generate a work of poetry or flash fiction.
Lauren Russell is the author of A Window That Can Neither Open nor Close: Poems, Plots, Chance (Milkweed Editions, August 2024), Descent (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2020), winner of the Poetry Society of America’s 2021 Anna Rabinowitz Award for “venturesome, interdisciplinary work,” and What’s Hanging on the Hush (Ahsahta Press, 2017). Russell has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Cave Canem, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and residencies from Millay Arts, Ucross, Yaddo, and MacDowell, among others. Her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, The New York Times Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, the anthology Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
Please note that there is limited accessibility to reach the Wine Cellar, where the program will be hosted. If you require more information, please email [email protected]
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