Editor's Note: In advance of the March 13 deadline to apply for Lit Fest Advanced Workshops, we've asked the 2021 Visiting Authors for a preview of their workshop style, what they're reading, and more.
What books/movies/tv shows have fired you up lately?
Schitt's Creek, Ramy, PEN15 and Wild Wild Country. Books: Woman at Point Zero by Nawaal El Sadawi, James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark, Roberto Bolaño's Last Evening on Earth, Richard Powers' The Overstory.
What are you working/currently trying to work on these days?
I've been thinking a lot about how literature can shed light on the ways in which systemic oppression has been historically generative for empires, colonial states, and dictatorships; stories, novels, poems are distinct in their capacity to record and remember catastrophes. I've been at work on a collection titled EXTINCTION, which consists of a series of speculative short stories that explore the nausea of occupying a Middle-Eastern-American body during two decades of civil war, terrorism, and U.S. military domination and gross human rights violations in the region. The stories take place in America, Spain, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, and capture the absurdity of communications media—television, Skype, Twitter, WhatsApp—when they become the only means through which those living in exile in the land of the instigator can view the homes they fled. The stories are in conversation with work by writers such as Claudia Rankine, Roberto Bolaño, Emile Habibi, James Baldwin, and Nawal El Saadawi—writers whose work is atmospheric, turbulent, and sharp in its investigation of the intersections between personhood and politics
How would you describe your workshop style?
Generative, supportive, explorative. I am attentive to each student's distinct voice and work alongside them to identify the emotional and formal obstacles that may be obstructing the work. I strive to listen deeply to the work and offer students resources and models (other texts) that help them further push their own artistic expression.
Are we living in a simulation or no?
I suppose we always have been!
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is teaching Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: Style, Intimacy, and Setting. Learn more here. Apply via Submittable.
