What Happens Inside: A Body Horror Workshop with Leticia Urieta

Thursdays, November 14 & 21, 2024, 6:30-8:30pm CST, via Zoom
Instructor: Leticia Urieta
Nonmember: $150; Member: $130; Student/Educator/Mil $75

*EARN CPE’S

TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

When it comes to our bodies, there is little we fear more than the inevitability that our bodies will change, can fall ill, and will die. Body horror helps us to write about the absurdity, beauty, and horror of being corporeal. 

This two-session virtual workshop will focus on reading and discussing stories of body horror that affect us and engage with stories of illness, trauma, loss, power, monstrousness, and reclamation. We will also discuss how these stories can inspire our own. In this generative workshop, we will engage with multiple activities inviting us to write and share our own body horror stories.

This class is open to writers of all skill levels 16+.

By the end of the class, students will have: 

• Draft 1-2 new pieces based on sample readings and class discussion
• Gain new insights into various genres, from horror to speculative imaginings, to apply to their future writing.
• Come away with an expanded knowledge of contemporary genres.

Leticia Urieta is a Tejana writer from Austin, TX. Leticia is a graduate of Agnes Scott College with a BA in English/Creative Writing and holds an MFA in Fiction writing from Texas State University.

She works as a teaching artist in the Austin community. She is also the Program Director for Austin Bat Cave and the Director of Barrio Writers in Austin and Pflugerville, a free college-level youth writers workshop founded by author and activist Sarah Rafael Garcia in Santa Ana, CA.

Her creative work appears in PANK, Chicon Street Poets, Lumina, and many others. Her fiction explores the intersections of Latinx identity with folklore, traditional stories, and the supernatural or speculative. Her mixed-genre collection of poetry and prose, Las Criaturas, was published with FlowerSong Press in November 2021 and was a finalist for the Sergio Troncoso Award for Best First Book of Fiction 2022 from the Texas Institute of Letters and a finalist for the 2024 Next Generation Indie Book Awards for Short Story Collections.

Leticia loves living in Austin with her husband and aging chihuahua, who are terrible work distractions. Despite all this, she is fueled by sushi and breaks to watch pug videos on Instagram.