What does protest have to do with writing, with literature? In this class led by award-winning author Anjanette Delgado, we will learn how to excavate our voices out from under the most potent censorship: our own. Presented in partnership between The Palm Beach County Public Library and The Cream Literary Alliance, Inc. Limited to 15 participants.
Every writer must find the source of those stories (irrespective of genre) that they, and only they, can tell. But we spend our lives hiding from precisely the things that would allow us to write our truths, to know our minds, to understand our sorrows. We exhaust ourselves litigating and relitigating the past internally instead of risking something by speaking out.
To be fair, we are taught to hide (especially if we are somehow deemed as "other:" women, black or otherwise a person of color, poor, disabled). We are taught to self-censor: "Don't be a whiner." "You're so dramatic." "There you go again, playing the (take your pick) card." So we don't protest. At least not publicly, and never when it's personal, because, what good can come of it? Or so we think.
The result is inauthentic writing. Less powerful writing. A silencing of sorts with grave consequences for art in general, and literature in particular.
In this class, we will learn how to excavate our voices out from under the most potent censorship: our own. We will learn how to excavate using a powerful method capable of changing our writing DNA, of self-generating courage so we can begin to write the stories we were meant to write, to make our mark in the world in the way our heart desires.
Anjanette Delgado is a Puerto Rican writer and journalist based in Miami. The award-winning author of the novels The Heartbreak Pill and The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho, she has written for the New York Times’ “Modern Love” column, Vogue, NPR, HBO, Kenyon Review, Pleiades, the Hong Kong Review, and others. She is the editor of Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootedness, which will be released by the University of Florida Press in October of 2021.
A Bread Loaf Conference Alumni, she won an Emmy Award for her feature writing in 1994 for Madres en la lejanía, a human-interest series about Latin American mothers who left their own children behind to work as nannies in the United States. She has taught journalistic ethics in Latin America for the UN's UNDP initiative, and literature at the Center for Literature cofounded by the Miami International Book Fair.
Please Register in Advance to Secure Your Place.
This workshop is free, first-come, first-served, and limited to 15 participants. It is specifically for women or people who identify as femme. Thank you for your understanding. Please be sure your email is accurate; we will send you the Zoom link and password after your registration is confirmed. One registration per person.
PLEASE NOTE: Our allotted tickets are sold out however there may be more registrations available on the County Library website.
TCLA is grateful to the Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation for providing the funding for this program.