Upcoming Kundiman Events:
Beyond Empathy:
Inhabiting Fictional Selves with the Intimate "I"
with meng jin
thursday, september 16th
4:00–7:00 PM ET
“As a writer, when I envision a picture, I try to look at the people who might be standing outside of it and remember that though they're not the subject, they're just as human and their interior lives are just as rich and mysterious as anyone else's.”
–– Meng Jin, Powell's Books: “Powell's Interview: Meng Jin, Author of ‘Little Gods’”
Is empathy the primary purpose of literature? Should a fiction writer’s highest aspiration be to walk a mile in their characters’ shoes? How can geopolitical and intimate dynamics of power influence and distort empathic intent?
We will examine the limits and pitfalls of the empathy model of literature, discussing the mechanisms and functions of storytelling as an art, and imagine the possibilities of an ethics of storytelling. We will read work that goes beyond the empathic model to inhabit the intimate “I” of the conscious self, and do generative exercises to explore and access these fictional “I”s in our own work, exploring an alternative to the empathic model in our own writing practice.
This class will be recorded and sent out to all registered participants the following week.
eligibility:
This craft class is open to all writers of color. The non-refundable tuition fee is $50. This class will be held over Zoom. There are scholarship spots available, and applications are open through Thursday, August 26th.
Registration for this class is now closed.
FACULTY:
Meng Jin is the author of the novel Little Gods, a finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Award and LATimes First Fiction Prize, and longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award. A Kundiman fellow, her work has appeared in Vogue, Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere, and in the anthologies Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. Her short fiction collection, The Odd Women, and a novel, Mothers and Girls: A Fake Memoir, for which she received a 2021 Creative Capital Award, are forthcoming from Custom House.