Writing on Writing: A Metafiction Working Group with Lena Rubin – Session 1 (June 17th & 24th, 6:00-9:00pm, $100)

In this experimental working group, we will study and play with the technique of metafiction — tentatively defined here as “writing on writing.” As we engage with metafictional texts such as Anna Moschovakis’ Eleanor, or The Rejection of the Progress of Love, Hélène Cixous’s FirstDays of the Year, Renee Gladman’s My Lesbian Novel, and Zia Anger’s My First Film, we will embark on a metatextual journey, both soulful and cerebral, transgressing the boundaries between fiction and autobiography, author and protagonist. Though our time together will include group discussion & reading together, you should also expect to generate a good deal of your own work! Participants will come away with an increased understanding of metafiction as radical technique, as well as new ways to approach their own art-making in service of more capaciousness, experimentation, and play. All are welcome: poets, readers, writers, artists, thinkers.

Lena Rubin is a writer, artist, and teacher based in Florence, MA. Lena’s work has been supported by the Outer Cape Artists in Residence Consortium, recognized with a nomination to the Best New Poets anthology in 2024, and published in Little Mirror, Second Factory, Afternoon Visitor, and elsewhere. Lena will complete an MFA in Prose Writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as of May 2026. More at lenarubin.tumblr.com.