Wendy’s Subway Kick Off Weekly WRITING NIGHT 5/13

Image Description: A turquoise square with one green circle in the top center, and one white semi-circle at the bottom center. The top left of the image reads “We Hear You ” in black,  which continues into the green circle, “Loud And Clear.” “Writing Night” is written in yellow across the lower center of the image. Black text in the white semi-circle at the very bottom of the image reads “Starts on Wednesday, May 13. Weekly online gatherings from 7-8:30pm. RSVP for ZOOM link at bit.ly/wswritingnight.”]

Wendy’s Subway are kicking off their weekly WRITING NIGHT sessions on this Wednesday, May 13 from 7-8:30 PM EST. Join them every week to write together and share work.

You can RSVP here to receive a ZOOM link to participate. 

WRITING PROMPT

Follow Wendy’s Subway on Instagram and Facebook for weekly writing prompts! Last week's comes from Anelise Chen:

Dream Writing 

This week, to accompany our reading of Leonora Carrington’s animal fables, my students are completing creative exercises derived from Surrealist practices: exquisite corpse, automatic writing, assemblage, and, of course, dream writing. In times like these, I think it’s best to approach writing from the dream side. 

To prepare, stow your phone in a drawer, far from reach, before going to bed. Better: Hide it under your couch cushions, or lock it up in a timed box. Consider nestling it between two heavy sacks of rice in the pantry. Close the door. Keep it somewhere you can’t access unless ladders or strong hands are involved. Accidentally lose it in the heap of unwashed sweatpants. Alternately, open up one of the many boxes of frozen pizza purchased in a moment of indiscretion, slide it in there. 

Resuscitate an alarm clock. Set it for 5:53 am. Place a glass of water, half full, by the bed; lay paper and pen next to it. Sleep. Upon waking, immediately record the images, feelings, and snatches of dialogue you remember in your dream state. Repeat this process as many times as you need.

Whatever you do, don’t try to turn it into an intellectual game, as Leonora would have said.

You can find a full archive of writing prompts visit our website here.
 

Recommended Reading

• You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine by Alexandra Kleeman (HarperCollins) - Minahil's pick: "This is an outrageous book, and I’m honestly obsessed with it. Kleeman explores the essence and boundaries of the self through a dissolution of the protagonist’s sense of self, a process rooted in her interactions with an encroaching roommate. Throw in a mysterious and sheet-consumed cult, extended meditations on hunger, a game show that tries to trick couples with their doppelgängers, and you’ve got a beautiful and odd and terrifying book that I’m still processing."

• Tropisms by Nathalie Sarraute (New Directions) - Sunny's pick

• Role Models by John Waters (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)- Gabe's pick: "An audiobook I borrowed from BPL, it’s read by Waters himself. He’s gloriously candid and I love the intimacy—when I’m in public and everything is so circumscribed—of having him in my ear, talking about people he reveres. It’s like having an angel on one shoulder a devil on the other, but both of them are John Waters, dressed head-to-toe in Commes des Garçons, giving only the best advice."

• The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada (New Directions) - Taylor's pick: "This is a great book to read right now. Perfect for the moment, as it’s a wonderful, strange antidote for the anxiety that others & I have been feeling about not being able to go back to work."

• The Book of Delight by Ross Gay (Algonquin Books) - Simran's pick: “A springtime reminder of simple things that can delight us."

• Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki (NYRB) - Corinne's pick: Three sisters grow up in the countryside near Athens just before the Second World War. Against this backdrop and their evolving understanding of this world around them, the sisters’ days are minutely reported through the weather and changing seasons, the town’s gossip and rumors, and their perceptions of the adults’ shadowy reality they can’t grasp quite yet. 

• Figure It Out by Wayne Koestenbaum (Soft Skull Press)- Rachel's pick: "Delicious, precise, Koestenbaum’s essays on art, writers, and writing testify to the power of the appositive--a mode of radical juxtaposition, where each sentence has earned its place by leveraging urgency and import against the looming potential of all things’ planned obsolescence and depletion. A frictional, continuous and unfolding balancing act which Koestenbaum uniquely excels at."