IALA offers a virtual workshop: ‘Writing as Resistance’ with Nancy Agabian
During a time of global upheaval, war, genocide and countless national crises and political injustices, writing can give us a means to express, document, defy and/or attempt to make sense of the senseless—in other words, to put into words that which has been made silent. In this workshop, offered by the International Armenian Literary Alliance, participants will respond to a few writing prompts intended to encourage resistance, such as reclaiming beauty as healing, taking stock in our community to find metaphors, and braiding narrative with observation.
Participants will optionally share the results of the prompts in small groups. Inspired by writers such as Zabel Yessayan, Franz Werfel, Audre Lorde, Noor Hindi, Diana Der Hovannesian and by the Connected Rooms writing workshop Agabian led in 2020-21, this 90-minute session will give participants a means to begin a poem, an essay or a multi-genre draft, as well as clarity and community to move forward with their resistance.
Date: Sunday, May 18, 2025
Time: 9:00 a.m. PT | 12:00 p.m. ET | 8:00 p.m. AMT
Duration: 90 minutes
Participation fee: $15 for IALA members; $40 for non-members
Click here to register for the virtual workshop.
Nancy Agabian writes at the intersection of being Armenian American, feminist and queer. She is the author of Princess Freak, a poetry collection; Me as her again, a memoir; and The Fear of Large and Small Nations, a novel which was nominated for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially-Engaged Fiction. As a community writing workshop leader, Nancy has worked with multicultural groups in Los Angeles, women writers in Yerevan, SWANA writers online, first-generation writers in Queens, New York, and young queer writers in NYC. A longtime creative writing instructor at NYU, she currently teaches at Bridgewater State University and Bay Path University’s MFA Nonfiction Writing Program, both located in Massachusetts. Nancy serves on the Queer Literary Committee and as a founding board member of the International Armenian Literary Alliance.
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