Events
Art & Craft of Speculative Nonfiction
AWP Conference, Los Angeles, 2025 with Carmen Maria Machado, Jami Nakamura Lin, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, and Shannon Gibney
Writing outside the boundaries of the verifiable in memoir can feel like being lost in the woods. But speculative memoir provides the space to interrogate truths through fabulism, folklore, imagined lives, hauntedness, and other slanted lenses. Authors will discuss how the speculative operates in their own books, the philosophy of their choices, the definitions of the genre, and the freedom it offers marginalized communities to challenge and renegotiate society’s definition of reality.
Fat, Flawed, & Fabulous: Writing Fat & Queer Narratives in Fiction & Nonfiction
AWP Conference, Virtual, 2025 with Miguel M. Morales, C. Adán Cabrera, Tiff Joshua TJ Ferentini, and Samantha Puc
Trans and queer fats are waiting for their “moment,” as it’s still radical to include characters that positively represent us in fiction
and nonfiction. This panel explores the challenges and rewards of writing while fat, creating fat characters, how to create positive narratives for fat readers living at the intersection of their queer identities and fatness, and other craft issues. Panelists will offer ways to transform negative narratives around fatness and queerness into positive ones.
How to Make a Ghost Walk: The Craft of Haunted Memoir
AWP Conference, Seattle, 2023 with Elissa Washuta, J. Nicole Jones, Jami Nakamura Lin, & Steffan Triplett
Mood is a distinguishing feature for ghost stories. What mood-setting techniques can haunted memoirists borrow from fictional ghost stories and horror movies to set the right haunted atmosphere for the nonfiction ghost story? This panel will explore that question and other craft
issues specific to haunted memoir (using examples from our own work and the work of others) as well as investigate the ethical considerations of making our real-life ghosts walk across the page.
Fat Queer Joy: A Discussion
AWP Conference, Philadelphia, 2023 with Miguel M. Morales and Tiff Joshua TJ Ferentini
Queer joy requires risk and trust. Trans and queer fats find joy standing in celebration with (and as witnesses for) ourselves and those like us. Join this discussion as fat queer and fat trans writers explore how to center fat queer pride, fat queer love, fat queer strength, fat queer vulnerability, fat queer empathy, fat queer kindness, fat queer friendship, fat queer adventure, fat queer laughter, fat queer trust, fat queer joy, and our queer and trans fatness on the page and in our lives
I AM ACE Panel
Women & Children First Bookstore, 2023 with Cody Daigle and Ashabi Owagboriaye
Haunted Prose
Printers Row Lit Fest, 2023 with Ananda Lima, John Duffy, and Sandra Miller
A Misfit of Ghosts: How Haunted Memoir Rethinks the Real
AWP Conference, Philadelphia, 2022 with Elissa Washuta, J. Nicole Jones, Jami Nakamura Lin, & Steffan Triplett
Haunted memoir unsettles traditional notions of memoir and nonfiction as it engages with ghosts, both metaphoric and actual, to examine what haunts us collectively and individually. In this session, panelists will discuss the various forms hauntings have taken in their work, how haunted memoir pushes against the constraints of normative nonfiction, as well as discuss how they create their ghosts on the page.
Fat, Trans & Queer: Growing a Writing Community & Lifting Voices
AWP Conference, Philadelphia, 2022 with Miguel M. Morales and Tiff Joshua TJ Ferentini
As queer lives take focus in life and in literature, fat queer/trans voices remain relegated to the shadows. This discussion, led by established and emerging writers, explores the challenges and rewards of writing while fat, crafting fat characters, and exploring fat queer/trans love, sex, anger, and joy. This session offers ways to transform negative fat and queer/trans narratives into positive ones and celebrate illuminating examples of fat and queer/trans literature and resources.
Give It a Name: Mental Health and the Writing Life
AWP Conference, Virtual, 2021 with Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Katie Mullins, Paul Pedroza, Ilana Masad
The writing life is one of solitude and struggle, and for some writers who deal with mental illness it can seem insurmountable. Panelists will discuss how identifying and naming their mental health concerns informs their work and opens avenues to successfully navigating the challenging paths towards publication and participating in literary culture. From cultivating a consistent writing practice through marketing and publicity, panelists will share their experiences with coping while working.
A Misfit of Ghosts: How Haunted Memoir Rethinks the Real
NonfictionNOW, Virtual, 2021 with Elissa Washuta, J. Nicole Jones, Jami Nakamura Lin, & Steffan Triplett (Watch)
Haunted memoir unsettles traditional notions of memoir and nonfiction as it engages with ghosts, both metaphoric and actual, to examine what haunts us collectively and individually. In this session, panelists will discuss the various forms hauntings have taken in their work, how haunted memoir pushes against the constraints of normative nonfiction, as well as discuss how they create their ghosts on the page.
Fat & Queer: From Proposal to Publication
AWP Conference, Virtual, 2021 with Miguel M. Morales and Tiff Joshua TJ Ferentini
Why is the process of publishing a book so secretive? What’s it like to navigate publishing a book without an agent? And what do all the clause breakdowns in a contract really mean? Editors of the Fat & Queer: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Bodies and Lives share their experience, from being sought out by a publisher, to the call for submissions, and through editing, publishing, and promoting their book. Real talk about contracts, contributors, communication, and, of course, snacks.
Classes
This class will be a scream, for sure! Join acclaimed horror writer, editor, and essayist August Owens Grimm for this four-session class on Zoom: Crafting Nonfiction Narratives Through Horror Movies. (First class is October 10.)
Online @ StoryStudio Chicago
4 Sessions
Thursdays, October 10th — 31st, 6pm to 9pm (CT)
Class Description: Horror movies can be a conduit for us to explore our fears, anxieties, and have a little fun while doing it. This makes them an ideal guide for nonfiction writers.
This four week generative course explores how we can adopt the plots and characters of movies like Hereditary, Jennifer’s Body, The Ring, and Halloween to tell our own stories. Through in-class prompts and discussion, we’ll create our personal definitions of horror, examine what we can learn about writing from horror movies, peek at the reasons horror movies fascinate us as well as examine how various writers have used horror movies to give voice to their queerness, mental health issues, and other parts of their identity through the characters in their favorite horror movie.
Participants will create their own hybrid essay based on a horror movie that fascinates them while we also investigate how their specific horror movie has captured their hearts, imaginations, and speaks to what scares them.
Online @ Writing Co-Lab
4 Sessions
Saturdays, October 5th — 26th, 12pm to 2pm (ET)
This class is a deep dive into 2 essays: my essay, “My Hand on the Glass” from It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror and Tania De Rozario’s “I Hope We Shine On” from her incredible book, Dinner on Monster Island.
Class Description: Horror movies can be a conduit for us to explore our fears, anxieties, and have a little fun doing it, which makes them an ideal guide for nonfiction writers. This generative course explores how we can adopt the plots and characters of movies like Hereditary, The Shining, Doctor Sleep, and I Saw the TV Glow to tell our own stories. Through in-class prompts and discussion, we’ll create our personal definitions of horror, examine what we can learn about writing from horror movies, peek at the reasons horror movies fascinate us as well as examine how various writers have used horror movies to give voice to their queerness, mental health issues, and other parts of their identity through the characters in their favorite horror movie.
August Owens Grimm 