Crafting Survival Stories

Saturdays, 10 a.m.-Noon PST
April 11-May 9
Five week course, online
Instructor: Eileen Cronin
$250

Catastrophe is becoming more common an experience than Americans imagined possible. Climate change, pandemic, sex trafficking, mass shootings or singular catastrophic events are on our minds. The result is that our society has become desensitized to the realities of catastrophic events. This workshop will support fiction and nonfiction writers completing a dystopian novel, a memoir about a personal involvement in a catastrophe or with work that delves into the dynamics of trauma.

Participants will explore universal themes, truths revealed about humanity and contributions survivors bring to a world in which mass catastrophe is becoming increasingly common. This course unpacks those truths through lenses including globalization, cross-cultural studies, biology, technology, sociology, psychology, climate change, environmentalism, writing and literature, philosophy and history.

Taught by Eileen Cronin, an author/psychologist who has published on surviving a mass catastrophe, this course will help writers push through and delve deeper in their genres.

Eileen Cronin’s memoir, MERMAID (Norton, 2014), was translated into three foreign languages and was one of O Magazine’s Best Memoirs of the Year. She’s won fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center and the APA, and she won the Washington Writing Prize in fiction. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Daily Beast and numerous literary magazines. She teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension and practices psychology under UCLA’s School of Medicine, and is a founding advisory board member of Angels Flight • literary west.

Scholarships are available based on need. To register or for more information, please email: Info@AFLWMag.com.