CROWN HEIGHTS — Sharpen your writing skills and delve into Brooklyn’s history with a free “historical fantasy” class this spring, taught at the Weeksville Heritage Center, site of the 19th-century free black community of Weeksville.
Author, poet and playwright Zetta Elliott will teach the weekly class, “Magic & Memory: An Exploration of African-American Historical Fantasy,” every Wednesday from April 15 to May 6, offering teenage and adult beginner writers “an opportunity to write creatively about the 19th-century Brooklyn community” at Weeksville, according to a press release.
Through poetry, dramatic monologue, memoir writing and short fiction, students of the class will write fiction “based on historical facts about Weeksville and/or the broad Black experience in the U.S.,” Elliott said in an email.
“Historical fantasy is … a form of speculative fiction that uses fantastic elements to reconsider/reconstruct the past. Historical fantasy concerns itself with social justice rather than an escape from reality,” she said.
All participants will receive a free copy of Elliott’s novel A Wish After Midnight.
Elliott is Weeksville's first writer-in-residence this spring, using her time at the center to host a literary salon, visit nearby Crown Heights public schools and conduct a community reading in May, the center said.
Twenty slots are available in the “Magic & Memory” class; prospective students are encouraged to sign up by emailing writer@weeksvillesociety.org. The class will be held on Wednesdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Weeksville Heritage Center at 1698 Bergen St. at the corner of Buffalo Avenue.
