Influence and In-Fluency: a writing workshop with Tonya M. Foster
Wed, May 7, 2025
4:00 PM–5:30 PM
Skylight Room 9100 at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, NYC. Free and open to all. Space is limited. Registration required.
In “Revolutionary Theater,” Amiri Baraka reckons with the image: What is called the imagination (from image, magi, magic, magician, etc.) is a practical vector from the soul. It stores all data and can be called on to solve all our “problems.” The imagination is the projection of ourselves past our sense of ourselves as “things.” Imagination (image) is all possibility, because from the image, the initial circumscribed energy, any use (idea) is possible. And so begins that image’s use in the world. Possibility is what moves us. In this writing workshop facilitated by poet and editor Tonya M. Foster, participants will be invited to map the array of influences that shape their intellectual and creative practices. We’ll write to explore what moves us in our thinking and imagination. This workshop is free and open to all, but space is limited so please register to attend.
Workshop participants will be invited to briefly share their writings at the start of the related public event at 6:30 PM Influence and In-Fluency with Tonya M. Foster, Samiya Bashir and Tracie Morris.
About the Workshop Leader
Tonya M. Foster is the author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court, the bilingual chapbook La Grammaire des Os; the forthcoming Thingifications::Mathematics of Chaos (Ugly Duckling Presse); and a co-editor of Third Mind: Teaching Creative Writing through Visual Art; and a co-editor of the forthcoming two-volume compendium Umbra Galaxy, Umbra Reader (Wesleyan University Press). A recipient of the 2023 C.D. Wright Award in poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Tonya is a Creative Capital Awardee and a Radcliffe Fellow. She serves as the George & Judy Marcus Endowed Chair in Poetry at San Francisco State University and is a New Orleanian raised by New Orleanians from way back. Tonya graduated from the CUNY Graduate Center where she was a fellow and editor with Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative and is a long-time collaborator with the Center for the Humanities.
This writing workshop and the related public reading are presented by Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative from the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Related Event
Conversation & Reading
Influence and In-Fluency with Tonya M. Foster, Samiya Bashir and Tracie Morris
