Autoportraits: Making Stories from Art with Susan Tomaselli

Course Summary

In 1960, experimental visual artist Yves Klein made a photograph that depicts him seemingly leaping into space from the parapet of a building. Klein’s image was not quite truthful: the artist made the jump on to a tarpaulin held by a group of friends who were later edited out. In AUTOPORTRAITS we will explore how to write literary selfies on people, places and things. We will use an artwork (Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Vivian Maier, and others) as a starting point, and will look at how to tell a story using a central character through various modes and techniques of writing (including Oulipo, surrealism, autofiction etc). We will consider the idea of ‘making’, exploring how story-telling is a construct, and how we choose to frame our writing is intentional.

Course Outline

AUTOPORTRAITS will look at different approaches into writing, and ways of fictionalising the self and others. This 6-week course will explore the characteristics of autofiction (autobiography and fiction), ekphrasis (written description of a visual work), and creative non-fiction (using fiction to tell a true story), as we consider how we might incorporate these techniques in our writing practice. Each week, we will also read short examples of this blend of real and fictional (Sheila Heti, Annie Ernaux, Teju Cole) to apply these perspectives and styles to our own work-in-progress. All artworks will be provided by the tutor, as well as short texts for close readings. This is suitable for all levels of writing experience, and no previous knowledge of art is necessary.

Course Outcomes

Participants will come away from AUTOPORTRAITS with a deeper understanding of hybrid writing, along with tools to find newer ways of telling your story.

Susan Tomaselli is founder and editor of gorse journal. She has written for numerous publications, art catalogues, and anthologies. She was writer-in-residence at Maynooth University 2020/21, where she completed a novel-in-essays, Traces. Recently, she participated in a set of workshops with writers and artists Clare Bell, Oein DeBhairduin, Sonya Gildea, Nithy Kasa, Nathan O’Donnell and Annemarie Ní Churreáin to jointly create the printed publication, State, in Relation. She is currently working on Perspectives, an experimental aural portrait of Irish women artists.

Booked out? To be added to the waiting list for this course, please email info@irishwriterscentre.ie.