Under Your Wonder: a 4-Hour Children’s Writing Intensive with Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond (via Zoom)

Under Your Wonder: a 4-hour children’s writing intensive with author of BLUE: A History of the Color  as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky (Knopf) 

The things you wonder about are maps to the wonder of the unique way you experience life and the world we share. In this 4-hour workshop, through prompts and exercises, you will dive below the questions that delight and/or ignite you to retrieve the treasure of the children’s book you have buried inside.

Prompts and exercises will specifically focus on:

1. Identifying the underlying question/thought that animates your wonder
2. Crafting a narrative for young readers based on your question/thought
3. Choosing language that sprinkles your reader with wonder–and unlocks their-own

NB: This class will be taught on Zoom and capped at 15. Link will be sent to email you use to register at the time of registration and again the day before the class. Please make sure to read our course policies page regarding workshop conduct and logistics before registering for any class at HVWC. Scholarship information will be available for this class on November 15th and applications are due on December 15th, 2022.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is the author of the children’s picture book BLUE: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky, illustrated by Caldecott Honor Artist Daniel Minter, and the young adult novel Powder Necklace, which Publishers Weekly called “a winning debut.” BLUE was named among the best books of 2022 by NPR. Her short fiction for adult readers is included in the anthologies Accra Noir, edited by Nana-Ama Danquah; Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara, edited by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey; New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent, edited by Margaret Busby, CBE, Hon. FIRSL; Everyday People: The Color of Life, edited by Jennifer Baker, and Woman’s Work: Short Stories, edited by Michelle Sewell, among others. Forthcoming from Brew-Hammond are an anthology of African and Diaspora voices, a novel, and a children’s picture book.

Brew-Hammond was a 2019 Edward F. Albee Foundation fellow, a 2018 Aké Arts and Book Festival guest author, a 2017 Aspen Ideas Festival Scholar, a 2016 Hedgebrook writer in residence, and a 2015 Rhode Island Writers Colony writer in residence. Every month, Brew-Hammond co-leads a writing fellowship whose mission is to write light into darkness.