PORTRAITS: WORD AND IMAGE
Ages 16-21
Summer 2016, Hollins Market

This writing and photography workshop will introduce student fellows to categories of Creative Nonfiction such as memoir, biography, and profile.  Fellows will work independently and collaboratively, creating their own bodies of work while reading and critiquing each other's writing, learning from and about each other.  The workshops will encourage an honest assessment of both who fellows are and what the truth is. Fellows will consider why we behave the way we do, and why we need to write about things that may be difficult to speak of, matters that intrigue us.  Fellows will also explore the photographic portrait, learning camera skills, aesthetics, light, composition.  They'll consider how we represent ourselves and each other, how a person is part of or distinct from her/his environment, and how these questions may be explored visually as well as in words.  Fellows will share their writing and photographs at a public event and on the program website.  Limited to 12 student fellows.

Parisa Saranj was born and raised in the turquoise town of Isfahan, Iran.  She holds a BA in Journalism from University of Massachusetts Amherst and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Goucher College. She is currently living in Baltimore and working on a memoir.  

Les Gray studies Cinematic Arts at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and hopes to inspire the community that inspired her. 

Jessica Hudgins lives in Baltimore, where she teaches creative writing and co-organizes Hey You, Come Back: A Reading Series. She received her MFA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins.  

Chrissy Fitchett, a graduate of MICA, is a practicing photographer and Program Coordinator for Baltimore Youth Film Arts.  Her work examines family structure, generational knowledge, and issues of political and social marginalization, such as forced migration and gender inequity.