Writing Patriarchal Power
This class will explore theory and literature by writers like Roxane Gay, Melissa Febos, and Katherine Angel that elaborate on limited legal and cultural definitions of sexual violation and that make various forms of interpersonal and social control in the wake of #MeToo more explicit. Through discussion and weekly writing exercises, we will also consider how our own writing about subjects like harassment, sexuality, assault, coming of age, partnership, caregiving, and intimacy can expand and restore nuance to representations of gender and male power.
This class will be a safe place for writers who wish to thoughtfully explore, whether through poetry, fiction, or nonfiction narratives, how we might, as writers, represent the mechanics and phenomenology of male power, misogyny, and patriarchal control. This class welcomes victims and survivors of sexual assault and violence. We will have a final optional sharing of work on the last day of class, and content warnings will be used generously.
Registration dates:
March 13: Scholarship Donation Day (Learn more.)
March 14: Member registration opens
March 21: General registration opens
Amanda Montei
Amanda Montei is the author of Two Memoirs, published by Jaded Ibis Press, and the sold-out limited-edition prose poetry chapbook The Failure Age, published by Bloof Books. She is also co-author, with her partner, poet, and artist Jon Rutzmoser, of the book Dinner Poems. Her fabulist prose poetry has been named a finalist in the Omnidawn fabulist fiction contest, the Essay Press book contest, The Elephants open reading period, the Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize, and the Tarpaulin Sky Book Awards. She holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and a PhD from the Poetics Program at SUNY Buffalo, where her research focused on modernist and contemporary documentary women's writing and art, especially representations of gendered violence and women's work. Amanda's writing and criticism has appeared/is forthcoming at Electric Literature, Vox, the Rumpus, Salon, The Believer, the Ms. Magazine blog, Gaga Stigmata, Entropy, Luna Luna Magazine, and others. Her poetry, fiction, and hybrid writing has appeared in numerous literary journals including Air/Light, Joyland, The Atlas Review, Dusie, Explosion Proof Magazine, PANK, and Delirious Hem. Montei has read and exhibited work at MOCA LA, NYU, UC Berkeley, PACT Zollverein Germany, Ishyo Arts Rwanda, University of Virginia, Burchfield Penney Art Center, and elsewhere. Her writing has received awards from the Riverrun Foundation and Juniper Writer’s Institute. She was previously editor of the literary journal P-QUEUE. She has been teaching writing for over a decade has taught and lectured at SUNY, CalArts, Diablo Valley College, Cal State East Bay, Catapult, Corporeal Writing, and numerous community arts organizations. She lives in California with her partner and two children and is completing her next book, a memoir about care and consent.
