Craft Seminar: Writing About Love with Ru Freeman
Craft Seminar: Writing About Love with Ru Freeman
4 Sessions: Saturdays, August 2, 9, 16, 23
9:00-11:0am ET
Ru Freeman
Ru Freeman is an award-winning writer, poet, and activist who teaches has taught internationally for over 15 years, and whose creative and political work has appeared internationally, including in the UK Guardian,The Boston Globe, and the New York Times. Describing her work, Colum McCann writes, “Ru Freeman captures the moment when the thorn enters the skin, and then she leads us forward towards healing. One of the best and most necessary voices of our times.” She is the author of the essay collection Bon Courage: Essays on Inheritance, Citizenship & A Creative Life, the short story collection, Sleeping Alone, and the novels A Disobedient Girl, and On Sal Mal Lane, a NYT Editor’s Choice Book. Her novels have been translated into multiple languages including Italian, French, Turkish, Dutch, and Chinese. She is editor of the anthology, Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine, and Indivisible: Global Leaders on Shared Security. Her poetry appears in Poetry, Poetry Northwest and American Poetry Review, among others. She holds an MFA in poetry from Rutgers University, an MA in labor studies, researching female migrant labor in the countries of Kuwait, the U.A.E, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She is a contributing editorial board member of the Asian American Literary Review, and a fellow of the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, theVirginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Lannan Foundation.
In the preface to her novel, LOVE, Toni Morrison writes, “People tell me that I am always writing about love. I nod, yes, but it isn’t true—not exactly. In fact, I’m always writing about betrayal. Love is the weather. Betrayal is the lightning that cleaves and reveals it.” Is all fiction, at some level, about love and betrayal? How is love—in all its nuance and complexity—elevated beyond the ordinary in literature, and how do we translate passion itself into prose? We will read selections from a range of writers, and examine the trammeled relationships that are shaped by love; love between parents and children, friends, siblings, lovers, and the divine, as well as love of country and place. Along the way, you will write and have the opportunity to share your work in class.
Each 2 hour class will be formatted the same way:
Open Q&A (15 minutes)
Discussion of readings (30 minutes)
Writing to prompts (15 minutes)
Open read of your work & responses (60 minutes)
At the end of this series of classes, students will:
Have a portfolio of writing to continue to work on
Discover the best shape for their own writing on the subject of love
Receive critical feedback on their own work
This course has 2 scholarships available. To apply, please fill out this form by Thursday, July 24.
Sri Lankan born writer and activist Ru Freeman is the author of novels, short stories, essays, and poetry. Her most recent book is the short story collection, Sleeping Alone (Graywolf Press, 20220), which Publisher’s Weekly, in a starred review, called, “a treasure.” Her novels are On Sal Mal Lane (Graywolf Press, 2013), a New York Times Editor’s Choice, and A Disobedient Girl (Atria, 2009), which Danielle Trussoni called, “startling, subversive and heartbreaking.” She is also the editor of the anthology, Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine (OR Books, 2015) a collection of the voices of 65 American poets and writers speaking about America’s dis/engagement with Palestine, and co-editor of the anthology, Indivisible: Global Leaders on Shared Security (Olive Branch Press, 2018.) Other creative and political work has appeared internationally, including in the UK Guardian, The Boston Globe, and the New York Times. She is director of the Artist's Network at Narrative4, a contributing editorial board member of the Asian American Literary Review, and a fellow of the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Lannan Foundation. She is the 2014 winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman. She writes for the Huffington Post on books and politics.
When asked about which form she prefers to write in, Freeman responded: “I like the novel more than the short story. I guess that would be one preference that I have, although I write both. I’ve actually been writing more poetry lately than working on the edits of the new novel, so I guess the hierarchy at this moment would be: poetry, novel, short story. The political pieces have to be written very quickly, because something’s happened and you want to talk about it and it has to be talked about now. There’s a charge that comes from writing that kind of stuff.”
She holds a graduate degree in labor studies, researching female migrant labor in the countries of Kuwait, the U.A.E, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and has worked at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, in the South Asia office of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL/CIO), and the American Friends Service Committee in their humanitarian and disaster relief programs.
She currently lives and writes in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.
