Magical Realism as a Vessel for Marginalized Voices

Event Details

Magical Realism—a genre often associated with Latin American literature that combines the magical with the mundane—has been leveraged to write about sociopolitical topics for decades. From authors like Gabriel Garcia Márquez highlighting the struggles of post colonialism and the two worlds that Latine folk must navigate to Isabel Allende’s eloquent takes on feminism, the genre is no stranger to providing a unique voice to groups of people who often go unheard. In recent years, Magical Realism has opened up to include many other marginalized voices. From Toni Morrison’s vivid and heartbreaking tales of being Black in America, to Aimee Bender’s stories about the suffocating silence that often comes with girlhood, we are seeing the genre take on new shapes. In this workshop, we’ll dive into the ways that Magical Realism is seamlessly political and write our own works that use magic as a way to give our characters a voice that can be heard by all.  

 About the Author

Téa Franco is a writer based in Indianapolis. She has fiction, poetry, and nonfiction published in Barrelhouse, Barren Magazine, Foglifter, and others. She coedited Kiss Your Darlings: A Taylor Swift Anthology and teaches creative writing workshops. Her first novel, You Could Be That Kind of Girl, was published last year. She received a travel grant from the Central Indiana Community Foundation to conduct research in Puerto Rico, where her family is from.