Description
Discover the extraordinary within your own history. This writing workshop empowers you to merge your true personal narratives with the compelling frameworks of speculative fiction.
Move beyond mere memoir. We’ll explore methods to refract your lived experiences through lenses of the surreal, the alternate, and the imagined futures. The focus is on using speculative elements as powerful tools to illuminate, exaggerate, and interrogate the deepest truths of your authentic story. Your reality provides the anchor; together, we will build the strange and wonderful ship.
DATE: March 21, 2026 – Saturday
TIME: 12PM ET | 11PM CT | 10AM MT | 9AM PT | 16:00 UTC
RUNTIME: Approximately 90 minutes
DURING THE WORKSHOP WE WILL:
• Frame the Personal with the Speculative
Learn techniques to identify the “fracture points” in your own memories where reality can bend, and explore how to apply genres like magical realism, alternate history, and soft science fiction to transform personal anecdotes into powerful narratives.
• Craft Metaphor from Memory
We will delve into using speculative elements not as mere decoration, but as intentional tools to create metaphors that exaggerate emotional truths, externalize internal conflicts, and interrogate the deeper meaning of your lived experiences.
• World-build From the Inside Out
Discover how to construct strange and believable worlds by using the specific, concrete details of your own life and history as an anchor, ensuring your story remains grounded in authentic emotion even as it ventures into the surreal.
You’ll leave this workshop with the first draft of a new piece of writing that transforms a personal memory into a speculative narrative, along with prompts and tools to continue mining your own history for extraordinary fiction.
About Your Instructor
Sage Tyrtle is a professional storyteller who tells stories all over the world, most recently in India. Her stories have been featured on NPR and CBC radio and she is a multiple time Moth StorySLAM winner, one-time Moth GrandSLAM winner, who has also appeared on the PBS tv show Stories From The Stage. She teaches The Art of Storytelling in schools, to individuals, and in corporate settings. Sage Tyrtle’s work is available in New Delta Review, The Offing, Lunch Ticket, and Apex among others. Read more at http://www.tyrtle.com.
