Some stories refuse a single genre.
In this four-week generative class, students will explore hybrid writing that moves between poetry, essay, memoir, and prose. Through contemporary readings, prompts, and discussion, we will examine how writers use fragmentation, associative movement, repetition, image systems, and nonlinear structure to create emotionally resonant work that exists between forms.
Students will experiment with lyric essays, segmented prose, braided structures, prose poetry, hybrid memoir, and genre-bending approaches to storytelling.
We will read work by writers such as Bhanu Kapil, Jenny Boully, Elissa Washuta, Maggie Nelson, Natalie Diaz, Lia Purpura, and Alexander Chee.
This class is ideal for writers who feel constrained by traditional genre boundaries and want to explore more intuitive, flexible, and experimental approaches to structure.
Students will:
* generate new work each week
* explore lyric and associative movement
* experiment with segmented and braided structures
* learn techniques for genre-bending writing
* study contemporary hybrid writers
* finish class with multiple drafts and expanded approaches to form
Sabina Khan-Ibarra is a Pashtun Muslim American poet, writer, and educator whose work appears in Anomaly, SWWIM, Rising Phoenix, and iO Literary, and has been recognized by CRAFT and the SmokeLong Award for Flash Fiction. Her poetry collection, What My Mouth Holds, is a two-time semifinalist. She also teaches at Litquake and San Diego Writers Ink, where her classes focus on image, emotional architecture, fragmentation, and contemporary literary forms. She serves as Director of Rooted & Written, a fellowship and conference program centering BIPOC writers.