'Writing the City' - A Writing Workshop

Writing Workshop with Parsa Sanjana Sajid returns in February. The three-week non-fiction writing workshop is titled and focused on “Writing the City.” 

The city has multiple constituents and constitutive factors. The workshop will take on one of those factors – the idea of a neighborhood or a “paara” – to read, think, discuss, and to write about the city. What and where is the beating heart of the city? Where and how to live as a community/ies? What ties or makes the idea of a community? How to render a city in writing? 

As a writing workshop, it will focus on writing as both craft and concept – how to think about a topic so we can write about them. Participants are expected to read and critically engage with assigned texts and materials on the theme, and draw inspiration from them, in order to produce their written work. Each session will be divided into discussion, writing, and feedback on pre-selected topics under the theme of the workshop. There will be a series of writing exercises in English including writing on prompt, experimental writing, pair-writing, short and long form writing. Participants are expected to be comfortable discussing and presenting their work with others in the workshop, provide feedback to each other’s work, and possibly develop a final work under the guidance of the faculty. Please note this is not a “writing 101” workshop but will cover the basics of conceptualization, style and argument, revisions to the writing process built around a specific theme. Reading and close reading will be essential to this process.

The workshop is open to all backgrounds, educational, and professional experiences. Women, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, and people from other diverse backgrounds are particularly encouraged to apply. The workshop will meet two days a week, on Sundays and Tuesdays. 

Parsa Sanjana Sajid, a writer and researcher based in Dhaka, will lead the workshop. Parsa’s interests are in politics, social movements, urban and social spaces, art and culture particularly digital cultures. Her recent projects include an oral history collection on the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent and online networking and organizing in Bangladesh. She has written for national and international publications including March, New Age, New Internationalist, Migrant Journal and the Funambulist Magazine. Parsa is currently working on an edited volume on national imaginaries and attachments to be published by Routledge.