Talking Pythons & Nylon Dogs: An Absurdly Generative Surrealist Workshop with Benjamin Niespodziany January 13- 15, 2023

Your lover turns into a paint can. Your brain becomes a toaster oven. Your house turns into a snail.

All of this and more inside the infinite world of the surreal and the strange. The weird and the absurd. The unheard and the perverse.

In this generative workshop, packed full of more prompts than one can tackle in a single weekend, we will dive into the surreal with dilated pupils and a mouth of mush. We will discuss work by modern authors Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, Sabrina Orah Mark, Mathias Svalina, Shivani Mehta, Matvei Yankelevich, and CAConrad, while also leaping into the past with surrealist legends Leonora Carrington, Daniil Kharms, Russell Edson, and William Aberg.

Straying from poetry and prose on the first day, this workshop will also focus on film / television / screenwriting / visual art on the second day. All of this as a means of getting you started on the page. A launching pad for all things surreal. Might you join in on the uncanny?