Announcing the 2021 FALL MERCURY INTENSIVE
OCT 4 – NOV 10, Mondays & Wednesdays, 7-9pm EST
applications close friday, oct 1, 10pm EST
- Storytelling critique focused.
- Sci-fi, fantasy, magic, smut welcome.
- De-centering MFAs, career path academics, or those currently connected to/embedded in institutional resources.
- Priority to Philly native and long-time residents.
- Pay what you wish.
? Read a recap of & testimonials from the summer intensive
Logistics
Must be able to commit to meeting 2 times a week for 6 weeks.
Monday prompt classes will be 2 hours and start with a brief 20-30 minute mini lesson or topic overview, followed by a 40-50 minute writing period, with 50-60 minutes for sharing and critiquing.
Wednesday classes will alternate between practice & critique. Practice sessions are 60 minutes of writing time, with 30 minutes before and after for discussion and sharing.
There will be 2-3 special topics classes outside from the 12-class core on the tentative subjects of publishing, process, performance. Details in application below.
Participants will be asked to submit brief, anonymous feedback after each session for the sake of improving the subsequent sessions.
Materials needed: Your favorite writing implements, your voice, imagination, fear, and hope. Be prepared to read your work and others’ aloud.
Meeting place is Discord, a software application for desktop & mobile that allows concurrent chat and video/audio streaming features, among a larger chatroom environment. If you think you will need help navigating this, leave a comment.
This intensive is $0~$5~$10 per class, pay what you wish. You can pay per class at time of attendance or in a lump $0~$60~$120 payment, to a cash handle I’ll provide later. I do not expect payment from Black and-or Indigenous participants.
We will have a celebratory event after the intensive.
Guiding Principles
This workshop is intended to be an alternative to prohibitively expensive, physically inaccessible writing workshops that center values of the publishing industry, art and academic institutions, and the imperialist/Eurocentric conception of the written word in general.
Participants will build up a reciprocal teaching-learning practice with each other, gaining technique, discipline, and confidence in our abilities to write, critique, speak witness to truth, and tell powerful stories. We will hone our PURPOSE for the stories we tell, consider our AUDIENCE, our INTENT and REPERCUSSIONS, and sharpen our abilities to know how, what, and why we are communicating in the long form of THE STORY.
You can read a selection of anonymous feedback from the initial, more rigorous intensive of June 2021 here.
Consider this as though entering into a martial arts practice that requires your dedication and follow-through.
We will use what we already have on hand.
Divination tools welcome.
Opening Schedule
1st ASPECT – “DEGENERATION”
10/04 MON – INTROS & “ENDINGS”
- PREP: Come with a few of your most and least enjoyable endings in your memory.
- TALK 20-30 MIN: Why are we here, why a monastery, what writing is capable of with practice. Endings. Take the promise. The kernel.
- PROMPTS: 15 MIN “GOALS” / 25 MIN “SHEDDING” (conjuring/summoning a self to do this work)
10/06 WEDS – “ENDINGS” cont’d
- 30 MIN: Chatting & discussing
- 60 MIN: Writing
- 30 MIN: Share writing & discussing
10/11 MON – “WORLDS OF MATTER”
- PREP: TBD
- TALK: Sensations, body, matter. What’s coming apart, breaking down, failing, ripping asunder, getting plundered, being forgotten, ready to die and be harvested.
- PROMPTS: 40 MIN “A CATASTROPHE”
- SUBMIT: Text files for 1st round crits. Please include if you have any particular context to share & crit wishes from your readers.
10/13 WEDS – 1st ROUND CRITIQUES
- Max 4 critiques.
- If more than 4, we will pull straws on it ahead of time.
- Can be something you already have written or something you wrote during the intensive thus far.
2nd ASPECT – “GENERATION”
10/18 MON – PROMPT
10/20 WEDS – PRACTICE
10/25 MON – PROMPT
10/27 WEDS – CRIT 2nd round
3rd ASPECT – “ITERATION”
11/1 MON – PROMPT
11/3 WEDS – PRACTICE
11/8 MON – PROMPT
11/10 WEDS – CRIT 3rd round
Interest Survey aka the Application