Jennifer Clement
There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.
Zora Neale Hurston
Writing of Witness expands first-person narrative onto the larger canvas that connects individuals to their surroundings. Through shorter magazine pieces or book-length projects, participants in Writing of Witness take their writing from singular to plural, individual to collective, by finding the language and often the unexpected ways to tell a non-fiction story and research a subject.
The true story is the heart of the law, and it is also the heart of literature. Both as a tool to uncover or disclose events that may lead to understanding, writing of witness also serves literature, as it can include imagining, wishing and prediction.
Open to writers with projects ranging from memoir to autobiography to texts that defy easy categorization, writing of witness is an invitation to pursue the truth in a voice more subjective than journalism but just as committed to revealing the stories of our time.
Participants will be expected to share submissions with one another in advance and to bring their best energy to revision and generating new material. Expect six three-hour group sessions and an individual conference to explore each writer’s path beyond the residency.