Writing Down Your Demons

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The word demon, comes from daemon, the Latin word for ‘spirit,’ which derives from the Greek daimon, ‘divine power’ or ‘genius.’ But how can we speak of divine power or beauty when our world rocks with loss, grief, change, and turmoil? Writing poetry allows us to see, name, and shape our demons into terrible beauty. In-class generative writing exercises, reading and discussing sample poems, plus Lynda Barry’s book One! Hundred! Demons, will be our core work.
Deborah Miranda

Deborah A. Miranda is a writer and enrolled member of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation in California, with Santa Ynez Chumash ancestry. Her hybrid project, Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award; the 10th anniversary edition of Bad Indians was released in 2023 as a hardback with 50+ additional pages of material. Miranda is also the author of four poetry collections (Indian Cartography, The Zen of La Llorona, Raised by Humans, and Altar for Broken Things) and co-editor of the Lambda finalist Sovereign Erotics: An Anthology of Two-Spirit Literature. Her scholarship focuses on California Indian experiences within and after Missionization and California Indian storyteller and culture bearers such as Isabel Meadows. She is Thomas H. Broadus, Jr. Professor of English emerita at Washington and Lee University, where she taught Native American Literatures and Creative Writing, and was an affiliate of the Shepherd Poverty Studies Program and the Women and Gender Studies Programs. She and spouse Margo Solod now live in Eugene, Oregon. 

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Week 7 - Writing Down Your Demons Week 7 | Aug 10 - Aug 14
Monday, Wednesday, Friday
8:30 am - 10:30 am
Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Poetry Room Spots remaining:13

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