METAMORPHOSES: NEW FORMS FROM THE BODY AND LANGUAGE

with Leigh Hopkins

A six-week generative lab with Leigh Hopkins, featuring videos including Corporeal Writing founder Lidia Yuknavitch.
Begins April 28th

Metamorphoses is a six-week online workshop unlike anything you've ever done before. Think of it as an introduction to Lidia Yuknavitch's Corporeal Writing. Dare to write differently. Open to new forms and meanings. Change your writing and the world.

Although we promise not to take your traditions and way of doing things away from you, we are convinced that some of us need to explore new ways of doing things, new writing practices that do not rely on the same shit we’ve been trained to mimic for the last 200 years. Call me crazy, but I think at least some of us are interested in exploring and discovering new writing practices and strategies, new ways of telling stories that correspond more authentically to our bodies and voices and the world circa 2023 and beyond. At the heart of my own writing you will find change. Change is the center of every story I have ever told. Here is why: plot, character, voice, tone, and action hold no meaning for me any longer in terms of how to structure a story. I can admire stories and art that makes use of that tradition, but I am not longer interested in using it, since it does not in any way correspond to my experience of being in the world. So we set about creating new coordinates and writing practices in our own work, and we figure we can’t be the only people on the planet who needs or wants some, so we're sharing them. 

Secondly, we believe that this new territory of writing practices requires collaboration over the old GURU model of teaching and learning. There is no guru in Corporeal Writing. There’s just us. And we are the rest of you, just like you all are the rest of us. “Metamorphoses” means change. We are writing to change selves, writing, stories, the world. 

Lab Structure:

In order to accommodate both synchronous and asynchronous modes, the majority of the work will be asynchronous and can be self-paced for each week. You will have log on to our interactive online platform, WetInk, where each week you’ll be provided a video featuring Lidia Yuknavitch discussing writing and the body as an epistemological site. You will have the option of posting your writing responses on WetInk; providing feedback to peers will be encouraged but not required. There will be three synchronous meetings (via Zoom) hosted by Leigh Hopkins. The three Zoom sessions will be 12PM PST on Tuesdays 4/30, 5/14, 5/28. Though attendance at these meetings is highly encouraged, it is not mandatory. All meetings will be recorded and posted the next day, for those who are unable to make part or all of the meeting times, with guided instructions on any activities/exercises covered during the meetings to be posted online. As well, there is an optional opportunity to have a one 1-on-1 conference with Leigh during the 6-week period.

Week 1: The Body as an Epistemological Site.

Week 2: Liminal Experiences: Sex, Death, Joy, Fear.

Week 3: Deforming Prior Forms.

Week 4: Self as Sediment vs. Self as Center.

Week 5: The micro, The macro; From Personal to Social.

Week 6: Environmental Subjectivity. 

Pricing:

The following payment model is inspired by and borrowed from the payment model of Bayo Akomolafe’s class, We Will Dance With Mountains: Into the Cracks. 

This course offers two sliding scales based on your relative financial standing. The huge range listed below is meant to reflect the incredible disparity in economic conditions of people living in different parts of the world, and also the historical reality of stolen wealth in many different forms, generally from the so-called Global South to the North. In an effort to reflect disparity in economic condition and access to wealth, the following payment system is designed for those with more wealth to help cover the costs of those with less access to wealth and resources. We trust your discernment of how your current financial situation and how you fit into the global economic context.

As you decide what amount to pay, please consider your present-day financial situation governed by income, but also the following factors: historical discrimination faced by your peoples; your financial wealth (retirement/savings/investments); your access to income and financial wealth, both current and anticipated (how easily could you earn more income compared to other people in your community, country, and the world); people counting on your financial livelihood including dependents and community members; the socio-economic conditions of your locale (relative to other places in your country and in the world); your relationship to food & resource scarcity.

$425 Supporter

$350 Companion (Note: This amount reflects the “real” value of this course.)

$300 Friend

$250 Partner

Payment plans are always available—contact our Navigator Daniel at registration@corporealwriting.com. A limited number of scholarships are also available.

Leigh Hopkins is the Editor and Curator of Khôra, a dynamic online arts space conceived and produced in collaboration with author Lidia Yuknavitch and Corporeal Writing. Leigh is a columnist at The Rumpus, and her work has appeared in BOMB Magazine, Longreads, McSweeney’s, Entropy, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, among other publications. She is a writing workshop leader at Corporeal Writing and the Director of Viva Institute. After the publication of Leigh’s essay The Brazilian Healer and the Patron Saint of Impossible Causes (Longreads), she was featured in a Brazilian documentary by the film crew who first exposed the crimes of John of God, the world’s most famous “spiritual surgeon.”

In 2010, Leigh left a career in social policy to move to Brazil, where she founded an online institute by rigging a satellite dish to a boulder in a banana field. Before moving to Brazil, Leigh was a leader in the design, development and implementation of the after school literacy program model Youth Education for Tomorrow (YET), which was referenced by President Obama in the New York Times as an example of what’s possible in community-based institutions. As the Vice President for Education of a leading social policy think tank, Leigh provided support to 500 literacy programs in historically underserved communities throughout the United States. Today, Leigh lives in Philadelphia with her wife and Portuguese-speaking Jack Russell Terrier.