Monsters as Metaphor

Monsters as Metaphor is a writing workshop at the North-East Branch of the Kansas City Public Library on Monday, October 26, from 12 PM to 2 PM. It's part of Writers for Readers, one of the city's top literary series, run jointly by the library and the University of Missouri-Kansas City's MFA program in creative writing. The session is led by a graduate student from that program.

The workshop starts with the idea that the horror genre has long mirrored society's anxieties. Literary monsters—ghosts, vampires, and the rest—often carry an underlying meaning that expresses or challenges the fears of the time. From there, the class asks you to do the same thing with your own life: take the fears and worries you're carrying and turn them into something you can actually defeat on the page.

To get a sense of the bigger picture, it helps to know where this fits in. Writers for Readers pairs author conversations with the announcement of the Maya Angelou Book Award winners. The series also holds an annual fundraiser dinner, which funds graduate internships for students who support the award and teach writing classes—the kind of class this workshop is. So, while you're working through your own monsters, you're also plugging into a local literary community that's been running for years.

It's an in-person session, and you'll need to RSVP to hold your spot. It runs from 12 PM to 2 PM on Monday, October 26, at the North-East Branch.