The Inner Life for Beginners is a series of three weekend creative writing workshops open to students from UC Berkeley and local colleges and co-led by UC Berkeley Associate Professor Chiyuma Elliott (African American Studies) and UC Davis Professor Katie Peterson (English).

The series takes its title from Lucille Clifton’s poem “We Do Not Know Very Much About Lucille’s Inner Life.” Each workshop will take inspiration from African American poets who have used or rejected the classics of the Western intellectual tradition in interesting and generative ways—particularly the Bible. We will think with these poems, and learn how to catalyze new formal, technical, and conceptual experiments in our own creative writing.

The workshops will be co-sponsored by the African American Intellectual Traditions Initiative (AAITI) and the Berkeley Institute across the Spring 2022 semester. Students can register for one or more of the workshops at the bottom of this page. Both undergraduates and graduate students are invited to register. Participation in the workshop is free. No prior experience is required, and there will be no “homework.”

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Workshop 1, How to Feel Ideas
Saturday, March 5th, 12 - 2pm @ the Berkeley Institute

Workshop 2, Poems that Pray
Saturday, April 2nd, 12 - 2pm @ the Berkeley Institute

Workshop 3, End at the Beginning: Writing your Spiritual Autobiography
Saturday, April 23rd, 12 - 2pm @ the Berkeley Institute