Workshop: Mining Your Obsessions
with Elizabeth Austin
We all have obsessions: the subjects, relationships, and questions we can’t stop writing toward, whether we mean to or not. In this generative workshop, we’ll treat these topics as a renewable resource. Through a structured exploration, you’ll dig into the patterns hiding in your existing work — recurring images, emotional landscapes — and turn them into a visual thematic map you can mine for years.
In this session, writers will: excavate patterns, working to surface recurring images, tensions, and questions; build personal thematic maps, placing a core focus at the center with 3–5 satellite themes radiating out, then spotting the intersections where unexpected new essays are born; generate at least five fresh essay ideas using six concrete strategies, plus tactics for matching themes to submission calls; and study how the pros do it, looking at writers who’ve mined the same territory for decades across forms and genres.
Mining Your Obsessions, a Workshop
with Elizabeth Austin
Thursday, February 4th
4:00-6:00 pm
Volta Center for Writing Arts
Bucks County Community College
Newtown Campus
275 Swamp Road
Newtown, Pennsylvania 18940
Fee for this workshop:
$15
$10: Seniors, Students, Veterans
BCCC Students: Free of charge
Bring cash or check
or Venmo @voltawritingcenter
Elizabeth Austin is an essayist, screenwriter, and educator. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Allure, Harper’s BAZAAR, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has received support from Sewanee, Hedgebrook, and LAMBDA. She is working on two books; a memoir, Good Mom, about building family in unexpected ways after her daughter's cancer; and a nonfiction book, Giantess, about tall women and subverting the patriarchy. She lives outside of Philadelphia with her two teenagers, their Newfoundland Numa, and three cats.