Craft Intensive: Multi-Vocal Texts: Internal and External Polyphany in Literary Fiction - Advanced Poets & Prose Writers
In-person craft intensive in East Austin exploring multi-vocal texts with internal and external polyphonies. We'll read excerpts from Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood and Experimental Animals by Thalia Field. Hosted by East Austin Writing Project (Austin, TX).
Full Description:
How do writers build a text that can hold more than one mind, more than one register, more than one truth at a time? In this Craft Intensive with East Austin Writing Project, we’ll explore multivocal texts, works shaped by internal polyphony (the chorus of selves inside a speaker) and external polyphony (archives, quotations, public discourse, and other voices in the world).
Together, we’ll read excerpts of Patricia Lockwood’s Will There Ever Be Another You and Thalia Field’s Experimental Animals to examine how contemporary writing composes a living chorus from lyric, documentary, essay, and narrative forms.
We’ll explore how these writers work with:
Internal polyphony: shifts in address, consciousness, persona, and self-interruption
External polyphony: quotation, citation, documentary fragments, and institutional language
Hybrid forms: fiction/memoir/essay crossovers, collage, and genre-switching as a craft tool
Voice systems: dialogue, refrains, tonal pivots, and competing registers on the same page
Structure & pacing: braiding, montage, segmentation, and narrative pressure created through juxtaposition
Ethics & authority: who speaks, who is ventriloquized, what is attributed, and what is withheld
We’ll read short excerpts, identify each book’s “voice set,” and break down key craft elements, then move into guided writing time to draft your own multi-vocal piece (poem, hybrid, or prose).
We’ll then critique one writer’s submitted work. This piece will be shared with participants in advance for pre-reading.
This workshop is perfect for:
Poets and prose writers interested in polyphony, hybrid forms, and multi-vocal structure
Writers working with memory, illness, grief, place, internet language, or public discourse
Artists in Austin’s arts & culture community who want to blend lyric intensity with documentary texture
Hosted by: East Austin Writing Project - a literary arts community offering Poetry Club, Craft Intensives, Critique writing groups, and Subculture Lit book club in Austin, TX.
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Austin, Austin TX, East Austin, Arts & Culture, Literary Arts, Poetry, Poetry Workshop, Creative Writing, Craft Intensive, Multi-vocal Texts, Polyphony, Internal Polyphony, External Polyphony, Hybrid Forms, Collage Writing, Documentary & Archive, Research-Based Writing