This is an online workshop that takes place via Zoom.
If this workshop is full when you try to register, please sign up on the waiting list here so you receive priority registration the next time this class is offered.
Speculative Fiction: Channeling the Dead, the Cosmos, and Everything In-between
What if someone invented a machine that let them speak to the dead? What if a person’s dreams revealed a political plot to erase an entire neighborhood? What if Texas had never joined the United States? What if children could vote?
“What if?” is the deceptively simple question at the heart of all speculative fiction. The answers, however, can be endlessly complex, inviting writers to blend genres, histories, futures, and literary traditions—science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, satire, historical fiction, horror, and beyond.
Some of the most celebrated writers in American literature have turned to speculative fiction to ask profound questions about our place in history, society, and the universe. Through readings by authors such as Ray Bradbury, Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Octavia E. Butler, Robert A. Heinlein, Colson Whitehead, Ursula K. Le Guin, Carmen Maria Machado, Nnedi Okorafor, R. F. Kuang, and Cormac McCarthy, we’ll examine the many forms the speculative can take. Through generative writing exercises that experiment with genre, form, and language, we’ll push our own fiction into unexpected territory. Finally, through workshop, discussion, and thoughtful feedback, we’ll help one another develop our work into stranger, richer, and more ambitious stories.
About the Instructor
Reyes Ramirez (he/him) is the 2025 – 2027 Houston Poet Laureate, as well as a writer, educator, curator, translator, and organizer of Mexican and Salvadoran descent. He authored the short story collection The Book of Wanderers (2022), a 2023 Young Lions Fiction Award Finalist, from University of Arizona Press’ Camino del Sol series, the poetry collection El Rey of Gold Teeth (2023) from Hub City Press, a finalist for the 2024 Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best First Book of Poetry, and Cerveza Songs: Houston, TX (2024), a collection of craft beer poetry reviews and photography that is an honor-winner for the Fred Whitehead Award for Best Design of a Trade Book from the Texas Institute of Letters. His latest curatorial project, The Houston Artist Speaks Through Grids, explores the use of grids in contemporary Houston art, literature, history, and politics. Reyes has been honored as the Winner of the 2025 Anne Frydman Translation Prize from The Hopkins Review, a 2024 Speculative Play and Just Futurities Fellow, a 2023 Intercultural Leadership Institute Fellow, a 2023 Dobie Paisano Fellow, a 2022 Crosstown Arts Writer in Residence, a 2021 Interchange Artist Grant Fellow, and a 2020 CantoMundo Fellow. He has received awards from the BIPOC Arts Network and Fund, Houston Arts Alliance, Poets & Writers, and The Warhol Foundation’s Idea Fund.
By registering for an Inprint Writers Workshop you are agreeing to Inprint’s registration policies. If this workshop is full when you try to register, please sign up on the waiting list here so you receive priority registration the next time this class is offered. For details and a schedule of all the current workshop offerings, click here.
CANCELLATION POLICY
To cancel your registration and receive a refund, you must email info@inprint.org or speak to an Inprint staff member by calling 713-521-2026 at least 2 weeks prior to the beginning of the workshop. No refunds will be given after the 2-week deadline for cancellation.
