Virtual, via Google Meet Hosted by fifth wheel press on June 28, 2026

Overview

As the boundaries between genres continue to blur, the cross-genre blend called speculative memoir has emerged as a powerful tool for writers seeking to “tell all the truth but tell it slant.” Instead of asking our retellings of reality to stick to the details as they occurred, speculative memoirs encourage us to imagine history-writing as being more like our memories: complex, fluid, and tangled up with dreams, myths, and fantasies.

This workshop explored speculative memoir, an exciting and emerging genre that has its roots in a variety of experimental and interdisciplinary approaches to historical writing.

Together, we:

1. traced the genre’s historical roots as a means for engaging with histories that have been erased, destroyed, or otherwise distorted by different forms of power, oppression, and violence;
2. read excerpts from recent entries in the genre; and,
3. built a toolbox of strategies and prompts for writing speculative memoir ourselves.

Content

During this two-hour workshop, we examined excerpts from:

• The Story Game by Shze-Hui Tjoa;
• In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado;
• Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde; and
• The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals by Samuel R. Delany.

The asynchronous version also looks at the methodology used by Saidiya Hartman in Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, itself a product of speculative archival work that Hartman calls “critical fabulation,” as well as a new form of speculative memoir called “autofabulation,” which I develop in my forthcoming book, The Ecology of Art, Strike!.

Finally, we worked through a series of prompts that allowed participants to walk away from the workshop with initial drafts of flash pieces in the genre.

Availability

This workshop will be held live by fifth wheel press via Google Meet.

An asynchronous version will be available via Itch.io in July 2026.

Compensation

Workshop sales were split three ways between fifth wheel press, fifth wheel press's workshop coordinator, and the workshop facilitator. 100% of sales of the asynchronous version go to the facilitator.

Virtual, via Zoom Hosted by fifth wheel press on February 15, 2024 Asynchronous version available on a pay-what-you-can basis via Itch.io

Overview

This workshop covered a broad range of approaches and strategies to incorporating elements from other artistic mediums into your writing, across four categories of hybrid works:

1. prose poetry/lyric essays;
2. audio art that combines sounds/music with text/narration;
3. visual works that blend aspects of photography, collage, sculpture, and art installations with text; and,
4. writing that incorporates “non-artistic” disciplines, like history, science, and math.

Content

The 90-minute workshop was broken up into four approximately twenty-minute segments, during which we spent:

• about ten minutes exploring examples of hybrid writing by writers and artists like Starr Davis, Sophie, Gabrielle Civil, Mita Mahato, Ro Daniels, Derek Beaulieu, makalani bandele, June Jordan, and Tongo Eisen-Martin;
• a few minutes exploring an example I created myself, with a brief explanation of my process;
• and then about five to ten minutes with a short, generative prompt, with time for participants to share their drafts in-workshop.

Availability

An asynchronous version of the class is available via Itch.io, and includes the following downloadable items:

1. a 90-minute video recording of the workshop;
2. a PDF written transcript of the video recording; and,
3. a PDF booklet of all the readings presented and referenced in the workshop.

Compensation

The first $200 of sales of the asynchronous version of the workshop available via Itch.io will go to Workshops 4 Gaza, to cover spots in their workshops for participants who can't afford the suggested donation. (As of May 2026, $7 have been raised towards this goal.)

Every dollar after the first $200 of sales will go to Gazans currently being prioritized by Crips for eSims for Gaza.