“Otherworldly: Story-building in the Unknown”

The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow (WCDH) is proud to present “Otherworldly: Story-building in the Unknown” on Saturday, December 11, from 1:00 to 4:00 pm at WCDH, 515 Spring Street, Eureka Springs. This writing workshop for all skill levels is instructed by Kathleen McNamara, winner of the WCDH “Moondancer” fellowship for environmental writing. The cost of the workshop is $40, and all proceeds benefit the WCDH scholarship fund. The deluxe registration of $105 includes lodging on Saturday night. Consecutive residency nights are available at a rate of $70 per night. 

To ensure the safety of all participants, WCDH COVID protocols are in effect, and registration is limited to allow for adequate distancing. Participants must be fully vaccinated for COVID-19.

Examining other worlds helps us better understand our own.  This workshop will introduce emerging and introductory fiction writers to the art of world-building. From historical fiction to slipstream to climate fiction, this workshop aims to help writers construct stories within the framework of an unfamiliar or surrealist world. “Otherworldly” participants will explore examples of story-building in intersectional literary genres and learn methods to create convincing alternate realities. They will produce new work and will have the option to share it with the class. Participants are invited to bring a writing sample, but it’s not required.

Kathleen McNamara's work has been honored with awards in the Carolina Quarterly, Redivider, and The Columbia Journal, and was a finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction and the University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Witness, Reed, The Columbia Journal, Nimrod, Redivider, Carolina Quarterly, The Pinch, and other journals.  McNamara grew up in Los Angeles County, California. She holds a B.A. from Barnard College at Columbia University and an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Arizona State University. She currently teaches writing at Arizona State University, where she is a 2021-2022 Creative Research Faculty Fellow at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.  Learn more at kathleenbmcnamara.com.

McNamara will be a writer-in-residence at WCDH working on a historical novel set in the American West in 1952 that explores the personal and environmental effects of above-ground nuclear weapons detonations at the Nevada Proving Ground throughout the 1950s. Research for her novel was funded by a 2020 research and development grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts.