Writing in Public Space: A Five-Week Generative Writing Workshop
Exploring Memory, Movement, and Meaning in the Everyday

​Description
This five-week generative writing workshop uses public space as a catalyst for new material. Through everyday activities—walking, loitering, shopping, commuting—we’ll explore how movement and observation can ignite new ideas or deepen works already in motion. Public environments like sidewalks, parks, and transit systems become sites where memory, attention, and story intersect. Your own observations will form the basis for meditative episodes, digressive accounts, and stream-of-consciousness vignettes that trace the interplay between the outer world and inner life.

Each week, students will receive a small booklet with prompts and guided exercises to frame their observations and support their writing practice, both during and in between sessions.

Sessions include four parts:

• ​A brief conversation and thematic introduction
• ​Time spent gathering material through guided exercises
• ​A focused in-class writing period with prompts
• ​Sharing and discussion

​This class is open to writers and artists of all levels who are curious about the relationship between attention, movement, and narrative.

​We’ll draw inspiration from short, optional readings by writers like Nicholson Baker, Teju Cole, Willa Cather, Virginia Woolf, Olga Tokarczuk, and W.G. Sebald.

By the end of the course, you’ll leave with:

• ​A body of new writing
• ​Sharpened observational tools
• ​Practical strategies for gathering material
• ​A renewed awareness of how the world around you can shape your creative practice

Location
In-person, held in various public spaces across Lower Manhattan: sidewalks, ferry decks, the subway, parks, storefronts, among others. Specific addresses will be shared with participants. All meeting locations will be accessible by public transit. In case of inclement weather, alternative indoor locations will be provided.

​Syllabus

• ​Week 1 — Recollecting
  Class overview, introductions, and show and tell. We will discuss writing techniques and strategies for generating material.
  
  
• ​Week 2 — Walking
  Movement through the landscape as a guide for writing and thought.
  
  
• ​Week 3 — Loitering
  Hanging out in public space as a means of generating writing and deep noticing.
  
  
• ​Week 4 — Browsing
  How shopping, browsing, and objects serve as prompts for memory, internal dialogue, and narrative.
  
  
• ​Week 5 — Commuting
  The boredom of transit, its constraints, and the writing it can produce.