Fiction Workshop: Kind of a Ghost Story: Haunted by the Unresolved with ‘Pemi Aguda

Thursdays, June 3 – 24 (4 weeks)
6:30 – 8:00 p.m. EST  |  Online via Google Meet  |  Register to receive link

Pay-What-You-Can Pricing: To ensure that these special workshops facilitated by our Emerging Writer Fellows are as accessible as possible to the widest audience possible, we’re putting it into your hands to pay what you can for this workshop. Choose a ticket price, ranging from $25 to $100, based upon what feels right to you.

“A ghost is memory granted form.”
– Colin Winnette, The Job of the Wasp

“Perhaps an honest feeling will always find a way to force itself through, an objector crying out in a crowd, hoping someone will hear.”
– Catherine Lacey, Pew

What happens when our deep-seated anxieties, buried griefs or unacknowledged desires are manifested physically? When our neglected emotions or unarticulated fears achieve form to haunt us?

From Laura van den Berg to Julio Cortarzar to Clare Beams and Jhumpa Lahiri, we will read writers of strange and speculative stories that engage with active metaphors of the ineffable expressed tangibly.

We will read two published short stories/essays for each class, then discuss reality, believability, mystery, hauntings. While responding to creative prompts, we will explore how to sharpen these elements in the stories we will be starting in this generative workshop.

This four-week class is appropriate for anyone writing fiction.

‘Pemi Aguda is from Lagos, Nigeria. She is a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program. Her novel manuscript won the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award, and she is currently a 2021 fiction fellow with the Miami Book Fair. Her stories have appeared in Granta, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction Online, Zoetrope: All-Story, among others. | pemiaguda.com

Scholarships Available for MDC Students

Miami Book Fair is offering two (2) full-tuition scholarships for MDC students interested in attending the above-listed creative writing workshops. Applicants must be currently-enrolled, (full time or part time) degree-seeking Miami Dade College students with a demonstrated financial need.

To Apply for a Scholarship:
Please send an email to Marci Cancio-Bello, Miami Book Fair programs coordinator at mcanciob@mdc.edu before the start of the workshop you would like to attend. The message must include your contact information, the title of the workshop you’d like to take, a short statement of financial need, your MDC class schedule, and a writing sample. First-time writers who lack a writing sample should submit a statement explaining their interest in the workshop.