Writing From the Body: A Fiction and Nonfiction 2-Week Class (Zoom) with Shze-Hui Tjoa, on Sunday, September 14th and 21st, 2025

Class is on Sundays, September 14th & 21st, 2025 Class will meet on consecutive Sundays via Zoom for 2 Hours at 10AM - 12PM Eastern Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button (lower left) to talk with us.  Instructor Shze-Hui Tjoa is a Singaporean writer who lives in Edinburgh, UK. Her debut, The Story Game: A Memoir (Tin House Books, 2024), is a genre-bending work about storytelling, sisterhood, the body/mind divide of c-PTSD, having been raised as a child musician, and deconstructing/finding the self. The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and Book Riot recognized it as a notable book of its release season. Shze-Hui is a Nonfiction Editor at Guernica and a Commissioning Fiction/Nonfiction Editor at Adi Magazine. Her career has been supported by various global arts organizations, including AWP and VONA/Voices (US), Disquiet International (Portugal), Green Olive Arts (Morocco), and the National Arts Council of Singapore.  Have you ever wondered what knowledge your body holds that your mind doesn’t -- yet? In this two-part class, we will explore this question together. In our first week, we will do a close reading of several fiction and nonfiction texts written from a bodily perspective -- covering themes including food, movement, sex, and pain. Together, we will learn about the strategies that writers across genres have used to successfully tap into the body’s point-of-view -- inhabiting the particular ways in which the body perceives sensation, time, and space, so as to bring the fullness and materiality of its experiences into their writing. In our second week, we will pivot towards generative writing -- while incorporating the theoretical knowledge we gained in week one. Shze-Hui will lead students through a writing ritual designed to help them find the unique voice of their own body -- tapping into its memories and unconscious desires to help it "speak" more clearly. The aim is for students to leave equipped with a long-form writing exercise that they can utilize independently, in whichever genre they usually work with (e.g. as part of character design in fiction, or to explore the self more deeply in memoir). COURSE TEXTS: We will read short excerpts from the following books: Butter by Asako Yuzuki, Little Scratch by Rebecca Watson, Hurricane Season by Fernando Melchor, there are more things by Yara Rodrigues Fowler, The Archer by Shruti Swamy, Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval, Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer, Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq, and others. COURSE OUTLINE: Week 1: Close-reading of nonfiction and fiction texts, as well as short writing exercises to learn from the literary techniques that writers are deploying in order to capture the body’s voice. Week 2: Long-form generative writing ritual to help writers find the unique voice of their own body, so as to help it “speak" more clearly on the page. COURSE TAKEAWAYS: Overall, students will leave with: Experience analyzing literary texts A syllabus of body-centric writing and books A toolkit of exercises that they can use to “drop down” from their minds into their bodies at any given time in their personal writing practices. And several pieces of experimental/generative writing that we will produce together in class ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE: This class meets weekly via Zoom. Come prepared for a super fun class with live interaction on Zoom each week and plenty of writing, reading, and talking. PAYMENT OPTIONS: Tuition is $150 USD. You can pay for the course in full or use Shop Pay or Affirm to pay over time with equal Monthly Payments. Both options are available at checkout. Instructor: Shze-Hui Tjoa Class is on Sundays, September 14th and 21st, 2025 Class will meet on consecutive Sundays via Zoom for 2 Hours at 10AM - 12PM Eastern Tuition is $150 USD.