Writing Co-Lab

Stories come to us from many sources: a lived experience, a conversation, a niggling question—or an image. Some writers are naturally visual while others lean toward interiority, perhaps missing all the rich visual cues surrounding us. In this generative workshop, we’ll focus on the ways that images can provoke associations that in turn, become compelling narrative. We’ll spend the first part of the workshop viewing and discussing examples of potent imagery and imagistic description. Then we’ll have a writing session inspired by a PowerPoint slideshow of images, followed by sharing and brief critiques. You’ll leave the session with a sharpened eye for observation and deeper appreciation for imagistic prose, along with a flash piece or the beginning of something longer.

About the Instructor

Chin-Sun Lee is the author of the debut novel Upcountry (Unnamed Press 2023), listed in Publishers Weekly’s Big Indie Books of Fall 2023. She’s also a contributor to the New York Times bestselling anthology Women in Clothes (Blue Rider Press/Penguin 2014). Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, The Georgia Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Joyland, and The Believer Logger, among other publications. She has worked as an educator for Writers.com, as a moderator for Academic Coaching & Writing, and as a developmental editor for The Reading List Editorial. Learn more about her at www.chinsunlee.com.