Society of Young Inklings

Dates: Monday-Thursday 7/24/23-7/27/23
Time: 9 - 11 am (PT) // 12 - 2 pm (ET)
Ages: 9-14

In this generative workshop that emphasizes the importance of play, we will use constraints in order to maximize our untapped potential as well as the potential of literature itself. We will read the work (prose, poetry, and theory) of some of the most playful and paradigm-shifting authors in literary history—Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, Anne Garréta, Italo Calvino, to name a few. Our goal will not necessarily be to make sense, but to excite the senses. Each day of the workshop will be dedicated to different exercises of constraint writing such as: Lipogram (the omission of specific letters, like Perec's novel A Void, which avoids using the letter "e"), the Erasure technique (crossing/blacking out the words of a found text—newspaper, magazine, novel paragraph, etc.—in order to create a distinct work of your own), Stile (in which each new sentence in a paragraph begins with the last word/phrase of the previous sentence), and Exercices de Stile (the rewriting of the same piece in at least 5 different styles (changing POV, genre, etc.), the idea being that we would choose a piece written from one of the previous workshops to rewrite.

________________________

Stone Soup and Society of Young Inklings are both nonprofit organizations, and part of our collaborative mission is to celebrate the full, vibrant diversity of youth writers' voices and stories.

To apply for a scholarship, visit this link.

To donate in support of scholarships, visit this link.

________________________

 Instructor Bio:

Caleb Berg is the blog editor of Stone Soup, and an MFA candidate at the University of Houston where he teaches rhetoric and creative writing. He is primarily a novelist, but also studies short fiction and poetry. His work has been published in Emerge Literary Journal, Chinquapin, and Versification Zine.

________________________

Cancellation Policy:

Camp transfers or full refunds will be given for cancellations requested one week or more before the camp start date. For cancellation requests received less than one week before the camp start date, you may choose to transfer to another camp or receive a refund minus registration fees of $15.99.

Minimum enrollment: 6
Maximum enrollment: 20

Should minimum enrollment not be met, we will contact you to offer a refund or other learning experience in exchange. 

Please contact us at info@younginklings.org with any questions.