The second session in a series of three online workshops hosted by Maya Popa’s Conscious Writers Collective and inspired by French poet and essayist Paul Valery.

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The music that is inside me.
The music that is in silence, in possibility
May it come and amaze me. 

— Paul Valery, Notebook VI, 292 (1916) author's translation

November Session: SINCERITY IN THE ERA OF FAKE NEWS AND DEEP-FAKES

How do we write sincerely given the challenges posed to “truth” by reproductions? We will look at examples of “real-fakes” in art and literature, complemented by excerpts from William Gass on sincerity and realism and Robert Walser’s “microscripts.” We will consider the adjacent concepts of written text vs. how it gets read and enclosure/ disclosure as tools that notate the way the text is played or performed by the reader. This will serve us as we develop our essay subjects and begin to think about the effect of transitions in essays.