Writing Miami: Creative, Place-Based Writing in Multiple Modalities (grades 8-12)

By the end of this two-week in person course, students would have written, revised, and workshopped three finished works, which could be submitted to writing competitions such as the Gingko Prize for Ecopoetry, the Nan Shepherd Prize, PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature, or the Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Student Contest. 
This short course is a study of writing as a spatial practice. We will examine our shared home informed by postmodern theory, cultural geography, and eco-composition. By writing focused in our unique cultural and geographic location, students can explore the where of writing—not just the places where our lives occur, but the sense of place and space that writers bring with them to their creating, remembering, and composing the stories of their lives in this particular space. This class will teach students various modes of writing including personal narrative, poetry, and flash fiction, and we will incorporate walking field trips to important sites in Miami’s oldest neighborhood, Coconut Grove.