A woman with dark hair and dramatic eye makeup is featured in the foreground, with a blurred background of greenery and trees, advertising a workshop titled "The Subconscious as Muse."

Asian American Writers' Workshop

LXCL:Register by June 30, 2026 for a 10% discount on tuition.

Early Bird Pricing

LXCL:Registration includes participation in a 2-hour in-person workshop

General Tuition

&ldquo;The creative process is a living thing implanted in the psyche,&rdquo; says Carl Jung. Within each of us lies a vast sea of profound creative potential, informed by our memories, instincts, archetypes, and latent desires. Yet in our day-to-day lives, the articulation of this subconscious is weighed down by the pressures of perfection and production. This workshop focuses on the generative potential of our subconscious creativities. Over a two-hour session, we will first learn about the Jungian concepts of collective unconscious, synchronicity, and universal archetypes. We will use three different artist&#39;s interpretations of tarot decks as prompts for a journaling exercise that will help us come up with characters, and then a narrative for them. Then, we will make word braids, using strips of paper made of cut up interviews and poems by artists we admire. We will use these braids to create word banks, and then draw on AAWW archival materials including poems, testimonies, and documents that trace the history of Asian American migration and belonging to inspire political poems that speak to immigration law, resistance, and the long fight for dignity and rights.&nbsp; Everyone will leave with a first draft of a political poem rooted in archival history, a new practical creative technique, and a deeper understanding of how the subconscious can serve as muse. ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR Swati Sudarsan is a writer from Michigan. They are a 2026-2027 Steinbeck Fellow, and have received fellowships from the Asian American Writers&#39; Workshop, Periplus, Millay Arts, and the Sue-Je Lee Gage Sunlit Residency. Their writing has been supported by organizations such as the Sewanee Writers&rsquo; Conference, the Granum Prize, McCormack Writing Center (formerly Tin House), the Kenyon Review, among others. They have been reading tarot professionally for two years.

“The creative process is a living thing implanted in the psyche,” says Carl Jung. Within each of us lies a vast sea of profound creative potential, informed by our memories, instincts, archetypes, and latent desires. Yet in our day-to-day lives, the articulation of this subconscious is weighed down by the pressures of perfection and production. This workshop focuses on the generative potential of our subconscious creativities. Over a two-hour session, we will first learn about the Jungian concepts of collective unconscious, synchronicity, and universal archetypes. We will use three different artist's interpretations of tarot decks as prompts for a journaling exercise that will help us come up with characters, and then a narrative for them. Then, we will make word braids, using strips of paper made of cut up interviews and poems by artists we admire. We will use these braids to create word banks, and then draw on AAWW archival materials including poems, testimonies, and documents that trace the history of Asian American migration and belonging to inspire political poems that speak to immigration law, resistance, and the long fight for dignity and rights.  Everyone will leave with a first draft of a political poem rooted in archival history, a new practical creative technique, and a deeper understanding of how the subconscious can serve as muse. ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR Swati Sudarsan is a writer from Michigan. They are a 2026-2027 Steinbeck Fellow, and have received fellowships from the Asian American Writers' Workshop, Periplus, Millay Arts, and the Sue-Je Lee Gage Sunlit Residency. Their writing has been supported by organizations such as the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Granum Prize, McCormack Writing Center (formerly Tin House), the Kenyon Review, among others. They have been reading tarot professionally for two years.

Asian American Writers' Workshop

The Subconscious as Muse: A Workshop with Swati Sudarsan

18 W 21st St #900

General Tuition

$100

Early Bird Pricing

$90

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