The first of a series of three nonfiction writing workshops led by Shanta Lee.  
Online via Zoom.
Registration Required. Please email jared.jenisch@thehowe.org to register.

Unzipping the Monster Within: An Introduction  
This generative and exploratory workshop will explore ways we can uncover the grotesque, the scary, the horrid and wretched when it comes to exploring who or what is the monster on the page across genres.

What can we explore within our psyche, lived experiences, or what we have taken in that will cause us to scream our own version of these lines on the page?  Some of our exploration will center around some of these concepts as we also bring it back to the page will include:

• An introduction to monster theory
• What is the attraction, seduction and emotional core of the horror/monster? 
• The obsession with perception —the gaze of the monster 
• How do we meet the monster that is within us or among us on the page? This is an invitation to erode the line between monster and the human self.
This is an invitation to erode the line between the monster that is separate from the monster that is the human. 

Shanta Lee is a writer of poetry, creative nonfiction, journalism, a visual artist and public intellectual actively participating in the cultural discourse with work that has been widely featured. She is also the creator and producer of Vermont Public’s “Seeing...the Unseen and In-Between within Vermont’s Landscape” and is a regular contributor to Ms. Magazine and Art New England. Shanta Lee is also the author of the poetry collection, GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues, winner of the 2020 Diode Press full-length book prize and the 2021 Vermont Book Award. Shanta Lee has an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction and Poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, an MBA from the University of Hartford and an undergraduate degree in Women, Gender and Sexuality from Trinity College.