A Starter Kit for Hybrid Genre Writers (before someone tells you to tone it down) + Upcoming Shows, Publications & Classes

In this issue: Upcoming Workshops and Appearances ~ A Starter Kit for Hybrid Writers ~ 5 things that are inspiring me ~ 3 Places to Send Work Out ~ About Me

Welcome!

Dear new friends, old friends, dear colleagues, writers along this journey with me. I have moved my newsletter to Ghost because I'm a horror queer (you can join my horror class), but also because I am slowly moving my energy to less evil platforms.

How are you? How is your heart? How are you holding the strangeness of a joyful unifying moment like the world cup (excluding FIFA and its nonsense), and whatever was happening on the DC Mall? (speaking of ghosts, here's an amazing photo essay about the great state fair that wasn't).

What I have for you this month is a mini-version of my Hybrid Genre workshop. If you're looking for writing/art help in any genre, or want to talk about your hybrid genre project, you can book a free virtual tea here. Thank you for sharing this adventure with me!

Next Up

• I'll be in Mendocino for the Mendocino Coast Writers' Conference. I'm teaching Hybrid Genre Workshop and Revision for Pantsers and People Who Hate Revision. You can still join for afternoon seminars here.
• My short story Antigone, But With Spiders, will be in ECO 25, Year's Best Speculative Ecofiction Anthology. More!
• I'll be performing at Electropixel in Nantes, France with GH{ }ST, my experimental music and performance duo with Kadet Kuhne
• I never got to share this incredibly incisive review of What A Fish Looks Like in Reckoning by the great Redfern John Barrett. Book link here.
• I'm teaching Writing from Fairy Tales AND The Horror Imaginary, both online, in August and September. Registration for both is open now. Writing from Fairy Tales begins August 4th.

Here are my upcoming workshops:

Hybrids

I'm teaching the Hybrid Genre workshop at MCWC. I'm so excited to be in a room with writers after my own heart: genrequeer, transdisciplinary, thinking a lot about form. I thought about starting the first class with "Good morning, neurodivergents and queers," but I didn't want to scare anyone who's not out yet (Kidding. Mostly). Maybe I can do that here:

Hello, Neurofabulous and/or Queer Artists! Welcome to your tiny hybrid writing module. Not to say that hybrid writers don't come from all groups, but most of us have a consciousness about form, like when Hannah Gadsby's Nanette broke standup comedy from inside the form. We got it.

If you're a hybrid writer, you usually find out in one of two ways: 1) by feeling like you/your writing is not enough - not literary enough, not speculative enough, not legible enough to a certain room, not easy enough; 2) by feeling like you/your writing are a bit too much - too much language, doing too many things at once, too weird, too much formatting. The project of hybrid writing, to me, is to resist a world that wants you to be only one thing at a time, to push the limits of what polite society calls writing, and to use form to defy form and tell a new story. And to play, always.

You know what else is always too much and not enough, uses form to wrestle with form, refuses to be just one thing? Monsters. We're back to monsters! If you know me, you'll say "Syr, you're only ever 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon away from monsters," and you're right, but hear me out:

Monsters, like hybrid writing, live at the intersections of culture and form. They incite category crisis. The Monster's favorite thing is to shatter binaries, beginning of course with us vs. them, and to remind us of our walls and what's behind them.

"Monsters ... release us from the prisons of our skins and bodily configurations. They show us that different arrangements are quite possible.” - Bayo Akomolafe

If you're curious about hybrid-genre writing, it might be fun to start here: what's your favorite monster, and why? What's your favorite version of that monster? Why is this monster here? What is your relationship with this thing we call monster? Are you a mermaid bombing a pipeline? Are you the vampire patiently sipping champagne waiting for your chance to pounce on Peter Thiel? Maybe your monsters are original to you, like Sofie Samatar's magnificent Monster Portraits, a beautiful hybrid text about hybridity. Maybe you haven't thought about monsters yet, but you've had the feeling of being othered, and like Kwame Dawes once said, "If you insist on making a monster out of me, I will replace that monster you made with one that serves me."

Next: What structures are you in tension with? Some of mine: standardized tests, tax forms, that last census form, the little button at the post office that says "is there anything toxic in this package," fundraisers. What structures or other forms do you love? Eg: Fairy tales, gossip, La Sagrada Familia, the shape of a soccer game, the ritual of making tea, the sound of loneliness. List yours. Diagram them. Try them.

Then: how and when and to what extent do you want to teach the reader to read your work? My friend the playwright Conrad Panganiban says: this is your house. You choose how you invite people in. You don't have to be legible to everyone, or to anyone. You can be "difficult" (see also Vibe Check's episode on Toni Morrison: Difficulty isn't a Wall, It's a Doorway) You can be cryptic. You can be cryptid. But when dealing with an unconventional form, you want to think about what patterns you set up on the very first page, and why, so that you can change them later.

Finally, What are some texts you love that feel like they could be in that hybrid club? That defied what writing can do for you? And why? The first hybrid text I saw was the play Ubu and the Truth Commission, which uses projections, puppetry, documentary, and absurdist theater to tell a story so big, you need more than one medium (the legacy of apartheid and resistance to apartheid in South Africa). The first hybrid book I read was Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts, and when I saw what he was doing, I almost lost my mind with joy. (BTW, I got Steven Hall to blurb my book. He was so generous. I almost died). I've spent my writing life looking for other hybrid writers, finding Anne Carson, Tom Cho, Shelley Jackson, Addie Tsai, Megan Milks...we're out here. There's room for you at this weird table. Matt Bell speaks about book community, which is different than comps, a gathering of books that speak to your WIP, even if they're different. If you're writing hybrid, I recommend having a bookshelf of hybrid books, because there will be a moment when you worry you're doing too much, and the visual reminder will help.

Here are three resources that have helped my journey as a hybrid writer, and a writing experiment below.

1. Family Resemblance (great book, ignore the title) is a literary anthology out of Rose Metal Press about hybrid forms. It's my favorite textbook for hybrid forms because instead of trying to create one definition of hybrid genres, the book contains a number of examples, each with a letter from the author about their process. While every process is different and not necessarily replicable, there is a certain way of thinking about form and content that helped me create my own work.
2. Here's a list of Hybrid-Genre Literary Magazines. To go read some of these, including Honey Literary, Fives, Beestung, is to get excited about the conversation.
3. Twine. Twine is an open source program that allows you to make games and branching narratives. It's where one of my favorite and shortest short stories was created: Anna Antropy's queers at the end of the world. It's a simple way to map out a text in a different form. And you can join a game jam yourself here!

So here's a writing experiment for you:
I want you to borrow one of the following forms. Roll a dice if that helps. Then I want you to try out an essay or story using that existing structure. Draw it if you have to. Write for 10 minutes, and then find a way to change the pattern and change the form. See what happens. How far can you push the form before it breaks? Do you want it to break? Then break it. Pull a Godzilla: refuse to forgive history.

1. A Tasting Menu
2. The Tallest Apartment Building on Earth
3. The labyrinth (or a corn maze, whichever you prefer)
4. The Census Form
5. A Museum Title Card (white cards in museums telling you what something is);
6. A Personality Quiz

Want more? Sure. Try it like this: you or a character are using that form to search for a person you miss.

5 Things That Are Inspiring Me

1. "Where government is absent, the people rise." Fantasma: A Ghost in the Diaspora's incredible reporting in the aftermath of the Earthquakes in Venezuela, including ways to help. I'm sitting with this line: "Donde faltó gobierno, sobró pueblo." Which leads me to...
2. Free Narcan and Training in CA. If you're in California, you can get free Narcan/ overdose first aid training (gamified, with cats) in 20 mins, from Endoverdose.net, and I just did, because they make it feel easy and possible to save a life.
3. Bona Books had a bout with AI. Their response was exceptional and based on people, kindness, & community. A great read for anyone in arts leadership.
4. War Pigs is a punk band fronted by a 3rd grader, a 7th grader, and their dad, and their song Banned Books is an absolute banger.
5. Meowdoku is Minecraft x Sudoku with cats. If that's for you, you're welcome.

Submission Opportunities

This month, focusing on speculative fiction work. Reach out if I can help you find something in your genre.

• Apex Magazine - open, closes July 16 
• Strange Horizons is open for poetry  
• Reckoning is open for SFF that engages with climate change. 

About Me

Hey! I'm Syr (they/them). Thank you for being here.

You are getting this because a) you signed up, thank you!; b) you're an artist/writer in my community or you've enjoyed my work and said it was ok to add you; c) you've taken a workshop with me, or have worked with me one-on-one. Welcome. Be welcome to unsubscribe at any time. 

Who I am. I'm a writer, art coach, and producer for hire. I specialize in helping artists, especially writers, find and keep their practice, finish their books, establish their careers, and expand the possibilities of their form. I have a speculative fiction aesthetic, but I work with writers across genres, from literary to commercial, from memoir to fantasy and poetry. You can read my testimonials here.

You can check out my upcoming workshops here.

Think you might like to work with me? Sign up for a 30 minute Free Virtual Tea below!