I’ll be teaching for an afternoon at the American School of Storytelling in Minneapolis in July. We have 12 seats left on Saturday, July 20th. On that day, we’ll discuss the incorporation of myth and meaning into our verse at a personal and community level. This is a 2-hour hands-on workshop on Myth and Meaning, guiding participants through the tangle of self and myth: looking anew at classics like the Inferno, the Odyssey, or even modern works such as Godzilla or Spiderman and how our own lives and stories can find interesting metaphors and material within them.
What are the advantages? What are the disadvantages and opportunities? What are vital risks and possible techniques to draw out an enduring poem from your experiences that align with our innermost imaginations? The cost is $20 for 2 hours, and follow-up conversations throughout the year.
The American School of Storytelling is a program of classes, performances, and resources dedicated to storytelling and other narrative art forms. Founded by storyteller Loren Niemi, the American School of Storytelling is joined by a rotating set of nationally and regionally recognized teaching and performing artists to bring your stories to life. They are based in Minneapolis, MN but their classes and performances can be found all over the United States and online.
Per my qualifications on the subject after 30 years of writing:
Bryan Thao Worra was adopted in 1973 by an American pilot flying in Laos. He served 6 years as president of the international Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (est. 1978) and represented the nation of Laos during the London 2012 Olympics Poetry Parnassus. With 20+ awards and fellowships, he is the author of 9+ books of poetry on the Lao American diaspora. He has presented at the Library of Congress, Poets House, Kearny Street Workshop, the Singapore Writers Festival, and the Smithsonian, and 100+ publications, including Poetry, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, London Ghetto Poets, Defenestration, National Geographic’s Poetry of the U.S., Asian American Literary Review, and Harvard Asian American Policy Review. He is the first Lao American to receive an NEA Fellowship in Literature for Poetry. His writing is cited in over 9 international textbooks including the 2012 edition of the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics and Wenying Xu’s Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater and over 27 academic papers. The author of 8 books, his work appears in over 100 publications globally including Australia, Canada, England, Scotland, Germany, France, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Chile, Pakistan, and the United States. His writing is translated in Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Tagalog, Bengali, and Lao.
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