Free Write with Alina Stefanescu

Mary Ruefle says the secret of every word is etymology, its "DNA", the fabric one pushes against to find the hidden seam. Two sides of a secret are "expression" and "repression." Two sides of a poem are "told and untold." In this free-writing session, we will explore how to defang a secret by telling it, by writing the visible and the invisible, riding the tension between what is sacred and profane.

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner and several intense mammals. Recent books include a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). Alina's poems, essays, and fiction can be found in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, World Literature Today, Pleiades, Poetry, BOMB, Crab Creek Review, and others. She serves as poetry editor for several journals, reviewer and critic for others, and Co-Director of PEN America's Birmingham Chapter. She is currently working on a novel-like creature. More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com.