The Writer's Studio: Language for Love

The Writer’s Studio is a free workshop series open to all students from all majors. Come study the art of writing in intensive, fun, hands-on workshops with dynamic faculty from the Creative Writing program, the Stanford Storytelling Project, and others. You will leave with an expanded understanding of what your writing can do.

Metaphor is the basis of most of the meaning-making we humans do—talking about one thing in terms of another is in fact at the heart of language, cognition, and imagination. For storytellers, metaphor is often the way we stretch our consciousness and invite others to stretch theirs. It is also the way storytellers try to grasp and express core human experiences such as loss, awe, and especially, love. In this workshop, we will look at how writers find their way to powerful articulations of love, whether romantic, familial, spiritual, or between friends. We will explore how contemporary writers often rework traditional tropes of love and mine ordinary encounters, objects, and even bits of dialogue to invent a fresh, specific expression of the feeling. Through a variety of short exercises, you will begin developing your own language for love.

Jonah Willihnganz is the Director of the Stanford Storytelling Project and Co-Founder of the LifeWorks Progam for Integrative Learning in the School of Medicine. He has published fiction, essays, and literary criticism and has taught writing and literature at Stanford since 2002. This winter he is teaching, with Shannon Pufahl, Fight the Future, a course on speculative fiction and social justice.