Workshop | Angelique Stevens

Nadia Owusu’s Whiting Award-winning debut memoir, Aftershocks, serves as the foundation for understanding the rich array of tools memoirists have to create complex narratives. We’ll explore such tools as metaphor, symbolism, and structure as we navigate the seismic upheavals of a life lived across several countries. Most recently chosen as one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2021, Aftershocks has also been chosen as a must-read by Time Magazine and Esquire.

Angelique Stevens’s work can be found in Lithub; The New England Review; The Chattahoochee Review; Cleaver; Shark Reef, among others. Her essay “Ghost Bread,” winner of the 2020 Prism International Creative Nonfiction Contest, was chosen for the Best American Essays 2022, edited by Alexander Chee. Angelique holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Bennington College, where she was a non-fiction fellow, and an MA from SUNY Brockport in Literature. She has received scholarships or fellowships from the Lighthouse Writers Workshops, the Periplus Collective, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Sewanee Writers Workshop, Tin House Winter Workshop, and Bread Loaf.

Reader’s Guiding Questions

How does the extended metaphor of the Aftershocks work in the book? What does it represent and does that representation change at all on a macro level in the chapters and in each of the sections? In what ways does this metaphor deepen our understanding of Owusu’s identity and story?

How do the Blue Chair chapters differ from the others? Consider both content and form as you read.

The author does not use a linear form to tell this story, and each of her chapters has a striking difference from the others. How does this strategy affect our reading of the story?

This virtual class with Angelique Stevens is streamed via Zoom.

Buy the book and join the conversation:

Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu

Members $30 | General Public $40 |  Scholarships available (Members: please remember to login to your account before ordering your ticket)