During this two-hour writing workshop we will explore the practice of ekphrastic writing, particularly through poetry and fiction. Together, we’ll discuss the impulse to write creatively about art, and ask questions such as: what can being moved to write about art do for our own artistic/literary practices? What can visual art as intertext open up for us as writers? Where might ekphrastic writing absorb or repel the critical mode of writing about art?
Writers are encouraged to select a piece of art in advance to think and write through during the workshop, and will be asked to share not only their experience with that art piece but also how they see it working in conversation with the themes and concerns of their own respective practices. This workshop will be structured to include both discussion and writing time.
Please bring a notebook and a writing utensil, or a laptop. Register for free below!
Jason Purcell is a writer, musician, and artist from amiskwacîwâskahikan, Treaty 6 (Edmonton, Alberta), where they are a PhD student in Department of English, Film, and Creative Writing at the University of Alberta. They are the author of Swollening (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022) and Crohnic, (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025), the latter of which was a finalist for the Robert Kroestch - City of Edmonton Book Prize. Across their work they’re interested in questions of gender, masculinity, and place.