Writing Motherhood
Tuesdays: May 5-26
7 - 9:30 p.m. EST
Led by ERIKA MORILLO
with guest authors Quiara Alegría Hudes, Nicole Graev Lipson, Jazmina Barrera, Rachel Yoder
$420 ($370 until Feb 25)
Please register with the email to which you’d like to receive class correspondence and readings.
How does a writer broach the topic of motherhood, an experience as large as life itself and as personal as the deepest flesh of our physical selves? How do we write toward the ineffability of maternal love, transformation, rage, sacrifice, and ecstasy? This Masters’ Series course provides the conversations, community, craft, and courage needed to approach every aspect of motherhood—conception, pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum, and caretaking.
In this four-session course, we will explore writing about motherhood in ways that move beyond sentimentality into sites of complexity, imagination, and agency. Through experiments with photographs and research as generative tools, somatic writing, essays that integrate imaginative elements, maternal memoir, and non-linear storytelling, students will deepen their craft. We will also examine how social systems, culture, and history shape who gets to mother and under what conditions.
Each session features a different guest author—Quiara Alegría Hudes, Nicole Graev Lipson, Jazmina Barrera, Rachel Yoder—whose work illuminates new and important approaches to writing about motherhood. Students will have the opportunity to pose questions directly to these authors and to experiment with writing prompts inspired by their work. By the end of the course, students can expect to complete a draft of a piece of writing about motherhood—whether a chapter, essay, or story—catalyzed by weekly assignments and probing conversations.
In this course, students can expect to:
Learn how to use photographs and research as generative tools for writing about motherhood and family
Conduct in-depth discussions about non-linear and experimental forms of storytelling
Explore approaches to writing interiority and the body
Discuss how to consider/integrate the sociopolitical context when writing about motherhood
This is not a workshop course—there’s no peer feedback—but you’ll generate plenty of new material through customized prompts and weekly assignments.
About the Instructors
Erika Morillo
Nicole Graev Lipson
Jazmina Barrera
Quiara Alegría Hudes
Rachel Yoder
Schedule
May 5
Quiara Alegría Hudes will discuss her new novel, The White Hot, the story of a runaway mother’s ten days of freedom—and the pain, desire, longing, and wonder we find on the messy road to enlightenment.
May 12
Nicole Graev Lipson will discuss her book Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, a USA Today National Bestseller. In this intimate and riveting memoir, Nicole breaks through the ready-made stories of womanhood, rescuing truth from the fiction that infiltrates our lives.
May 19
Jazmina Barrera will discuss excerpts from her books Linea Nigra: An Essay on Pregnancy and Earthquakes and Cross Stitch. Linea Nigra was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Autobiography Prize, the CANIEM’s Book of the Year Award, and the Amazon Primera Novela (First Novel) Award.
May 26
Rachel Yoder will discuss her book Nightbitch, which was named a best book of the year by Esquire and Vulture and recognized as a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction. It was adapted for screen in 2024 by writer and director by Marielle Heller, starring Amy Adams.
Details
This course will take place on Zoom on Tuesdays from May 5 - 26 from 7 - 9:30 p.m. EST. Participants will receive a Zoom link prior to the course as well as a recording of the course afterward.
After you take a course with Off Assignment, you’ll be invited into our private writing community for alumni on Slack. It includes channels for publication opportunities, reading recommendations, meet-ups, and more—not to mention literary companionship that outlasts the course itself.
There is a 10% cancellation fee if you cancel your enrollment more than 1 week before the start of the course. No refund will be given if cancelling within less than a week of the course start date (or after the course has begun).
Please email courses@offassignment.com with any questions.
FAQs →
Financial Aid
The full price for this course is $420, with early bird pricing at $370 available until February 25. Payment plans are available at checkout via ShopPay.
A limited number of scholarships for this course are available. Please fill out this form by March 4, and we’ll get back to you within a week after the deadline. (Please hold off on registering until you have received a scholarship decision.)
Off Assignment’s Masters’ Series courses are unique four-session courses that delve deep into a specific writing topic by harnessing the expertise and craft tactics of a renowned writer in a particular niche, plus four celebrated authors. Participating writers gain a wealth of advanced techniques while benefiting from a cohesive community of disciplined writers.