If at first glance trauma and hope are like oil and water, what might it mean that writing can often do the impossible and become the great emulsifier?

 

In this creative nonfiction course, we will name the areas of our lives where the most respair (as fresh hope) is needed and write toward our pain by both remembering and forgetting and, ultimately, improving our emotional intelligence via a life-defining literary excursion.

 

With Roxanne Gay, Jesmyn Ward, Natasha Trethewey, Louise DeSalvo, James Pennebaker, Rachel Havekost and others as our writing guides, let us learn to share and write with empathy and optimism about the traumas that have too-long kept us from being the best version of ourselves for the best people that deserve us most.

 

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About the Instructor:

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Tommy Mouton is a southern writer and an award-winning educator. His work appears in Visible, Baptist News Global, The Writer’s Chronicle, Auburn Avenue, Callaloo, and elsewhere.

 

Over the years, he has received fellowships from The OpEd Project, Writers’ League of Texas, AWP, The Tasajillo Residency, Steinbeck Fellows Program, and Callaloo.

 

A Louisiana native, he currently lives in Austin, where he serves as an Assistant Professor of English at Huston-Tillotson University. A literacy advocate, he co-owns FLEX YOUR WORD® with his wife April.

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LEFT MARGIN LIT'S CANCELLATION/REFUND POLICY:

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If you find that you can't take a class for which you registered, you may request a refund, less a $25 administrative fee, at least 48 hours prior to the start of the first class session. If a class doesn't reach its minimum enrollment, it will be cancelled, and all students will receive full refunds.