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NYWW's Our Father Who Art: A Father's Day Intensive with Tim Tomlinson

Our Father, Who Art: A Fathers Day Workshop in Writing the Father
Sunday, June 17, 2018
2:00-6:00 pm

From Kafka and Baldwin to Sharon Olds and Mary Gaitskill, writers have wrestled with the figure of the father. In this workshop intensive, through samples of prose and poetry concerned with the father, we'll do our own wrestling. We might not subdue, we might not fully apprehend the legacy, the influence, the impact of our fathers, but we'll get insights and intuitions, verses and paragraphs onto the page, and that's a start.
Prior to the workshop, participants will receive a packet of prose and poetry. The packet might include work from Abdul Ali, Kim Addonizio, Nick Flynn, Natalia Ginzburg, Yusuf Komumyakaa, W.S. Merwin, Geoffrey Wolff, Jacqueline Woodson, and others. The session will begin with a discussion of the packet, with an eye toward premises, approaches, and craft. Then we'll launch into our own work with exercises based on samples.
The workshop runs for four hours. I expect participants will initiate at least three new pieces: one or two poems, one or two prose pieces. Everyone will walk away with working drafts of potent material.

Tim Tomlinson grew up on Long Island, where he was educated by jukeboxes and juvenile delinquents. He is the author of the chapbook, Yolanda: An Oral History in Verse, the poetry collection, Requiem for the Tree Fort I Set on Fire, the collection of short fiction, This Is Not Happening to You, and co-author of the craft book, The Portable MFA in Creative Writing. From stories such as Shiner and You Have to Understand Your Father, to the poems At Night, After the Screams and My Father Has a Dream, his work has grappled with the figure of the father. He is a co-founder of New York Writers Workshop, a professor in NYUs Global Liberal Studies, and a resident of Brooklyn, NY.