Addressing Internal Struggles Through Creative Writing

Erika Almenara

Students from the Creative Writing in Spanish course will read poems produced during the semester at 2 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 29. The public reading will take place at Mullins Library, room 452. Light refreshments will be served.

The pieces students will read cover topics such as belonging, sexual assault, depression, friendship, queerness and love, among others. Students will reflect on how their experience in this class and how creative writing, but also art in general, can be a safe space to address and heal wounds. 

The Creative Writing in Spanish course, created by associate professor Erika Almenara, a published Latin American author, introduces students to basic skills and tools needed to be a creative writer in Spanish.

"This semester I have chosen the title 'Spaces of intemperie' as a way of thinking and contextualizing creativity. My aim was that this course be a spatial and temporal place of exposure from and to vulnerability. Through their writing, students expressed feelings, emotions, images, etc., about what it means to them to be, lo live, to love, to exist, to express… 'a la intemperie,'" said Almenara, who teaches in the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures.

During the semester students were able to meet with Latin American and Caribbean writers and poets via Zoom to hear more about their writing processes and how writing has been a way to learn about vulnerability, compassion and healing.