Anya Achtenberg is a fiction writer and poet whose publications include the novel Blue Earth, and novella The Stories of Devil-Girl; poetry collections The Stone of Language, and I Know What the Small Girl Knew; and individual works in many literary magazines, including Harvard Review; Gargoyle Magazine; Mizna; Hinchas de poes?a, Tupelo Quarterly; Poet Lore; Taos International Journal; Malpais Review. Awards in fiction have come from Coppola's Zoetrope: All-Story, New Letters, the Asheville Fiction Workshop, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and more; with poetry awards including first prizes from Southern Poetry Review and Another Chicago Magazine.
Prior to publication, the manuscript of The Stone of Language was finalist in five competitions: Philip Levine Poetry Contest; Hayden Carruth Award (Copper Canyon Press); May Swenson Award from Utah State University Press, Cleveland State University's Poetry Center Prize, and Alice James Book Award. Soon completed are the poetry collection, Watch the Rising; and novel long-in-progress, History Artist, with an ensemble of characters connected to three genocides and their aftermaths, and centered around a young Cambodian woman born with the U.S. bombing of Cambodia.
Anya consults with writers individually, and teaches three series of fiction/creative nonfiction/multi-genre creative writing courses: 1) Writing for Social Change: Re-Dream a Just World; 2) The Disobedient Writer Workshops; and, 3) Say it! Digalo! A series of standalone multi-genre workshops. More at anya-achtenberg.com and Anya's fiction, poetry and writing on craft at Writing in Upheaval, here: anyaachtenberg.substack.com
"Achtenberg is a poet of lyrical intensity... interested in detail for the wealth of revelation and music it will yield up." - Luis H. Francia, The Village Voice
"Anya Achtenberg's visionary workshops on writing for social change have received national acclaim. With this book of poetry, she practices what she preaches--redreaming a just world--in a way that is simply breathtaking." - Demetria Martinez, author of Mother Tongue
"Stunning and original! Powerful 'make it new' language." - Stratis Haviaras, founder and former editor of Harvard Review
From Modern History Press
Achtenberg, Anya: - Anya is currently at work on History Artist, a novel-in-progress, which explores the aftermath of holocausts in various communities through an ensemble of connected characters, and centering in a young Cambodian and African American woman, born the moment the US bombing of Cambodia begins. Also in-progress, Matadors at the Crossing, a poetry collection. Anya's teaching on writing craft goes beyond conventions with creatively expansive approaches that reflect multiple experiences, histories, aesthetics, uses of language, and approaches to story. Her essay on out-of-category identities and their relationship to the inadequate instruction to "write from a sense of place" was published in How Dare We! Write: a multicultural creative writing discourse. She has begun work on volumes that collect her radical creative writing pedagogy and workshop materials. The first volume from the Writing for Social Change: Re-Dream a Just World Workshop Series, will be based on Body Stories, Body Song, and the Elements of Story Craft. This focuses on bringing forward authentic and rooted craft through an examination of the relationship between the body and all the elements of story, including the very structures of the stories we write. Working with many kinds of bodies, such as the captive, the liberated, the traumatized, the adorned, the dislodged and diasporic, the body in resistance, opens and shifts the writer's relationship to their craft. Anya has also worked curating Cuban film festivals in Minneapolis and elsewhere; and has organized a number of arts and history-focused multicultural journeys to Cuba, for writers, artists, filmmakers, educators, and other travelers. A national and international writer's consultant, Anya has taught creative writing workshops privately; as well as for schools including New York University, Hamline University, Sarah Lawrence's Writing Institute, the Transformative Language Arts Network-a Goddard partner, the University of Minnesota's Split Rock arts program, the University of New Mexico's Honors Program, and Taos summer writing program; and for writers' organizations and conferences including The Loft, Intermedia Arts, the International Women's Writing Guild, the Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences, and SouthWest Writers. People in 60 countries have taken her online creative writing courses through Writers.com, TLAN, Udemy.com, and privately.Her forthcoming Patreon.org page will make her workshops and writings more widely available; courses, webinars, and critique groups will be gathered at Teachable.com.For more information, please visit Anya's website, The Disobedient Writer, here: https: //thedisobedientwriter.com/
