Mary Anne Mohanraj - Writing Complex Identities

Writing Complex Identities

Each and every one of us possess complex identities, which include such elements as our age, race, gender, ethnicity, religion, class, national, political orientation and much more. In this workshop, Mary Anne Mohanraj will help us explore complex identities through the lens of fiction and/or creative nonfiction. (All prose genres are welcome.) Participants will move through a set of writing exercises designed to help them expand the complexity of their characters, looking at aspects of diversity, the language we use for description, where characters come from, and authenticity.

Mary Anne Mohanraj is the author of Bodies in Motion (HarperCollins),The Stars Change (Circlet Press) and eleven other titles. Bodies in Motion was a finalist for the Asian American Book Awards, a USA Today Notable Book, and has been translated into six languages.  Mohanraj founded the Hugo-nominated science fiction magazine, Strange Horizons, and serves as editor-in-chief of Jaggery, a South Asian literary journal (jaggerylit.com). She received a Breaking Barriers Award from the Chicago Foundation for Women for her work in Asian American arts organizing, won an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Prose, and was Guest of Honor at WisCon. She serves as Director of two literary organizations, DesiLit (www.desilit.org) and The Speculative Literature Foundation (www.speclit.org).  Mohanraj is Clinical Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and lives in a creaky old Victorian in Oak Park, just outside Chicago, with her husband, their two small children, and a sweet dog. She is currently working on a breast cancer memoir, a science fiction novel, and a collection of poetry. Visit www.maryannemohanraj.com.   

9-9:30 AM registration and socializing
9:30-12 PM program