The Writing Seminar: In Living Color

What role does color play in shaping how we experience narrative? How do writers use color not only to describe the visible world, but also to evoke memory, emotion, and cultural meaning? In this graduate-level workshop, we will explore how creative writers employ color figuratively and thematically to enrich their work and heighten the reader’s sensory and emotional engagement. Through texts by Kevin Young, Sheila Heti, Miles Davis, Maggie Nelson, David Batchelor, Han Kang, Tyler, the Creator, Claudia Rankine, and others, we will examine how color operates across genres as mood, motif, metaphor, and cultural signal. Discussions will frame weekly generative writing prompts that invite experimentation with imagery and symbolism. Through collaborative learning and constructive critique, students will engage with revision at the levels of both sentence and structure. This workshop welcomes writers beginning new projects, as well as those with works in progress.