Evicted Writing Workshops: Where do you come from? where are you going?

Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, a sobering study of eviction as both a symptom and cause of American poverty, is the Rutgers Reads selection for 2019-20. Inspired by the themes raised by the book, the Writers House will host three generative writing workshops, open to the Rutgers community and general public. These workshops, led by MFA alumni Catherine Buck and Allie Casey in consultation with the Walter Rand Institute, will explore participants’ relationships to ideas and definitions of home;, housing insecurity, neighborhood changes and gentrification, migration, and more. Participants are invited to take part in one or more workshops as they’re able, and all are invited to share the stories they develop at a “story-share” in early 2020.

Workshops take place Oct 3, Nov 6 and 20. 

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Where do you come from? Where are you going? our first workshop on October 3, will focus on themes of migration. Migration might encompass a move from one side of the world to the other, a search for refuge and safety from war or political upheaval in one country, or it might remain local, tracing a route from one neighborhood of a city to another. This workshop encourages participants to trace their own migrations, small or large, to and from residences that may feel more or less like home. 

About the facilitators:

Catherine Buck is a writer and teacher from Burlington, New Jersey. Currently, she teaches composition at Rutgers-Camden and La Salle University, and facilitates youth writing programs at Mighty Writers Camden. She has participated in community writing workshops in El Paso, Texas, and tutors students in Pennsauken, NJ. Her fiction is often concerned with a sense of place and belonging, and much of it discusses issues of social justice. She is teaching Evicted this year in her Composition 101 classes.

Allison Casey received her MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University—Camden. A New Jersey native, Allison received her BA in English and Certificate in Creative Writing from Rutgers University—New Brunswick. Her work has been published in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Occulum Journal and Moonchild Magazine.  

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Learn more about Evicted and Rutgers Reads here.