Maps for Worlds Still Becoming: Experiments in Genre, Language, and Form

How do we write futures that don't yet exist? How do we map territories we're still dreaming and discovering? In this hands-on, generative workshop, participants will create new work across three experimental approaches—speculative memoir, multilingual poetry, and hybrid forms. Designed as a space for exploration rather than mastery, the workshop invites writers to take creative risks, work across boundaries, and imagine new literary possibilities together. Through guided exercises and creative constraints, writers will produce fresh pieces that break conventional forms and chart unknown terrain. Led by three writers whose practices are rooted in experimentation, collaboration, and cross-disciplinary thinking, the session offers prompts, models, and frameworks for writing into the unknown. Opening Conversation (20 minutes) A brief panel discussion exploring how experimentation in form, language, and genre can open pathways to futures that traditional narratives cannot reach. Faculty will share generative techniques from their own work before participants choose a breakout workshop. Three Breakout Mini-Workshops (40 minutes each) Speculative Memoir: Writing Your Alternative Futures Led by Aimee Phan Participants will write new memoir pieces that blend memory with speculation—generating parallel narratives, alternative outcomes, or projected futures from lived experience. Through prompts that ask "what if?" alongside "what happened?", writers will explore how speculation can deepen truth rather than abandon it. Leave with a draft that reimagines a pivotal moment from your life through multiple possible timelines. Tongues of the Future: Multilingual & Diasporic PoetryLed by Zeina Hashem Beck Writers will create poems that incorporate multiple languages, experiment with code-switching, or use linguistic hybridity as a generative constraint. Drawing on models from contemporary translingual poets and adapted traditional forms, participants will write pieces that reflect how we actually speak, think, and imagine across cultures. Generate new work that envisions futures where such mixing is not marginal but central. Hybrid Forms for a Digital AgeLed by Eric Olson Participants will produce experimental pieces using constraints, collage, and unconventional structures that respond to our fragmented, multimedia contemporary moment. Through timed writing exercises and formal experiments influenced by visual art and digital culture, writers will generate work that resists traditional narrative expectations and invents new shapes for new realities. What You'll Take Away All participants will leave with new drafts, fresh techniques, and concrete generative methods to continue experimenting in their own practice. This session is especially well-suited for writers drawn to risk-taking, cross-genre work, and expansive notions of voice, form, and belonging. This event took place in Downtown Berkeley, at the Bay Area Book Festival, May 29-31 2026.  Support our work and help to keep the Bay Area Book Festival 96% free! https://givebutter.com/writingthefuture Check out our upcoming events www.baybookfest.org Follow us on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/baybookfest/