Feminist and Anti-Racist Futures: A Fiction Intensive [Online]

Full Tuition: $380 — Scholarship options are available in the drop-down enrollment menu for you to self-select.

Instructor: D.M. Spratley | 3 Months | 6 Sundays | May - July | 12:00 - 2:00 PM ET | ONLINE

*Class dates: May 5, May 19, June 9, June 23, July 14, July 28*

Night School’s Fiction Intensive is back with new authors and content. This series will rotate, so take it as many times as you’d like! You’ll get something new out of it every time, along with the opportunity to write and workshop a piece of short fiction each session.

While speculative fiction that centers feminist and anti-racist concerns has only become widely published in recent decades, the work of authors like Octavia Butler and Margaret Atwood has changed the literary landscape, introducing readers to the ability of speculative fiction to illuminate oppression and imagine liberated futures. These writers hold a mirror to our society by showing us totalitarian regimes that strip women of their rights, or a late-capitalist dystopia full of company towns and legal enslavement–and then give us characters who break the boundaries of these societies by founding new religions, leading themselves and others to freedom, coordinating with vast underground resistance networks, and fighting to maintain their dignity and humanity. In some cases, they give us new worlds altogether. As readers and writers of speculative fiction, we might wonder—how do we imagine feminist and anti-racist futures within a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy? How can speculative work challenge the structural and cultural frameworks that hold oppression in place? We will consider these questions as we explore speculative craft and work on our own original fiction.

In this class, students will explore their own visions of feminist and anti-racist futures, while deepening their knowledge of craft and technique, and creating their own speculative fiction grounded in various cultural literary traditions. This intensive craft and workshop cohort will meet twice per month over three months, alternating discussions of craft with peer workshop, and incorporating generative prompts throughout the course. Students can expect to write and workshop 1-2 pieces of short fiction (or excerpts of longer works) by the end of the class. Between sessions, students will spend time developing their own writing, as well as reading the work of authors such as Akwaeke Emezi, Julia Armfield, and Carmen Maria Machado.

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Recordings may be provided upon request for missed classes.

Sliding Scale: Night School Bar pays instructors and staff a living wage, and your tuition goes toward supporting this practice. Please pick the payment tier that corresponds to your needs, and consider our commitment to fair labor practices when doing so. We will never request or require proof of need, and do not use an income-based sliding scale; we trust you to decide what payment tier is right for you. If you would like additional support deciding or would like to learn more about the practice of using a sliding scale, we recommend this resource from Embracing Equity. 

Scholarships: We are currently able to offer three full scholarships per class. Our full scholarship tier is a nonrefundable offering, limited to one per student per month. Because our scholarship funding is limited, selecting multiple full scholarships in a single month will result in disenrollment from all classes. If the scholarship tier you need is sold out please email us directly, and we will add you to a waitlist and notify you if additional scholarships become available. Please see our FAQ for more information, including installment plans and refund policy.

Asynchronous Auditing: Classes are discussion-based and designed to be taken synchronously. However, we do offer an asynchronous audit option for most online classes if you need to follow along at your own pace. You must choose the audit option to receive all course recordings; please do not register using a scholarship if you do not plan to attend the majority of class sessions as you will not receive the recording materials to follow along. We do not automatically offer scholarships for auditors, but if you need one, you may request one by filling out this form.