Shapeshifting Into Short Forms: Prose Poems, Brief Essays, Tiny Fictions Scribes

Find delight, magic and surprise in writing short pieces (all under 1000 words) — defying genres but packing power and imagination. “I’d like to capture an individual in a single sentence, a soul-stirring experience on a single page, a landscape in one word!” Peter Altenbergis offers, quoted in the opening of Short, an anthology edited by Alan Ziegler, which will offer us inspiring texts to learn from. Each day of camp will leave you satisfied as you invent a brand new piece (or more) of writing that is compact yet very vivid and alive. This camp will be facilitated by Samar Abulhassan, a published poet and educator.

This camp is for students entering 7th & 8th grade in Fall 2022 and will take place online using Zoom and Google Classroom. Scholarships are available by application. Questions? Please email youth@hugohouse.org.

*Note – all Scribes Summer camps are in Pacific Standard Time

Samar Abulhassan

Samar Abulhassan is a Jack Straw Writer, and holds an M.F.A. from Colorado State University. She’s worked in California public schools for seven years. Born to Lebanese immigrants and raised with multiple languages, she is a 2006 Hedgebrook alum and the author of six chapbooks, including Farah and Nocturnal Temple. Samar has worked with Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools since 2008. Samar also recently participated in the 2018 Skagit River Poetry Festival. In 2016, Samar received a CityArtist grant to aid in completing a novel-in-poems reflecting on memory, longing, and the Arabic alphabet. Samar often finds inspiration in images and places and replicates these techniques in her teaching. She has explored Pike Place Market and the Seattle waterfront, both of which influenced her work.