Begins Thursday, January 21, 2027

Class will meet weekly via Zoom on Thursdays, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM ET

🌍 Class Times by Time Zone: Los Angeles (PST): 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM / Denver (MST): 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM / Chicago (CST): 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM / New York (EST): 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Now Enrolling! Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button to talk with us.

Instructor Bio

Instructor Bianca Alyssa Pérez is a poet, educator, and editor from South Texas. Her chapbook, Gemini Gospel, was the winner of Host Publication's Chapbook Contest in Spring 2023. Her debut poetry collection, snake breath, is the winner of Hub City Press' 2026 Deep Line Poetry Prize and is forthcoming in Spring 2027. Her work is published in these beautiful places: Porter House Review, Infrarrealista Review, New York Quarterly, Poetry Daily, Praisesong for the People Anthology (edited by Amanda Johnston), The Texas Observer, The Baltimore Review, the Bangalore Review & forthcoming in an anthology from The University of Nevada Press. She is the co-host of the horror podcast, Basement Girls, with writer Steph Grossman. She is also the Director of the Katherine Anne Porter Visiting Writers Series at Texas State University.

Who is this class for?

This online poetry workshop is for poets drawn to the places where fear lives in the body—beneath the skin, at the edge of desire, inside inherited wounds, in the transformation of the familiar into the strange. Open to writers at all levels, from those new to horror poetics to poets deepening an existing practice. If you want to turn what frightens, unsettles, or repels you into poetic material, this class is for you.

What to expect:

Writing the Monstrous is a six-week generative poetry workshop that explores what happens when we write from the places where fear meets the body. We will examine the monstrous not simply as one sole creature or figure of horror, but as a poetic language for transformation, excess, vulnerability, desire, inheritance, memory, and the parts of ourselves that resist being made legible. Through close reading and generative exercises, students will experiment with grotesque imagery, bodily detail, sensory distortion, metaphor, myth, persona, fragmentation, and the uncanny.

Each week, students will encounter poems and other texts that use horror and the grotesque to unsettle conventional ideas of the body, the self, and the familiar. Writing exercises will invite students to excavate personal and cultural archives, transform memories into monsters, monsters into memory, inhabit unfamiliar bodies and voices, and approach fear as both subject and compositional force. We will pay particular attention to how poets create tension through image, sound, syntax, withholding, juxtaposition, and surprise. Students will receive peer feedback in a workshop format during Weeks 2, 3, and 5, with a dedicated revision workshop in the final stretch of the course.

This creative writing course emphasizes experimentation over polish and discovery over predetermined meaning. Drawing on Bianca's practice at the intersection of horror, poetry, memory, and the body—informed by her work as co-host of the horror podcast Basement Girls and her horror poetics workshops for the Desert Nights Rising Stars Conference and Write About Now—this Zoom writing class treats the monstrous as a poetic framework for excavating embodied memory, inherited fear, and cultural mythology. Students will leave with a portfolio of new poems, a collection of generative practices they can return to in their writing, and a deeper understanding of how the monstrous can become a tool for making poems that are strange, embodied, unsettling, and alive.

What are the writing goals?

In this course, students will produce:

• 6–8 new poems or substantial poem drafts, generated through the course's weekly prompts and exercises
• 3 revised and polished poems: approximately 1–3 pages each, incorporating feedback and focused revision on image, sound, syntax, structure, and the use of the grotesque/horror poetics
• 1 longer-form or sequence poem: approximately 3–5 pages, that develops one of the course's central concerns—fear, the body, memory, inheritance, transformation, and/or the monstrous
• A personal, poetic archive of 12–15 generative writing exercises, including prompts exploring bodily memory, personal and cultural mythology, monsters, fear, distortion, and the uncanny, which students can continue using after the course
• A final 5–8 page mini-portfolio containing the student's strongest revised work from the course, accompanied by a brief 1-page reflection on their use of horror, embodiment, and the grotesque as poetic strategies

Students will receive peer feedback in a workshop format during Weeks 2, 3, and 5 (revision workshop), along with instructor feedback on revised poems.

Readings

Readings may include excerpts from Saul Hernandez, "How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters"; Natalie Diaz, "The First Water Is the Body"; Franny Choi, "The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On"; Richard Siken, "Dirty Valentine"; Ada Limón, "The Leash"; Louise Glück, "The Drowned Children"; Natalie Shapero, selections from Hard Child; Jackie Sabbagh, "Having a Great Time Being Transgender in America Lately"; Laurie Ann Guerrero, "Where I Will Not Let You Take Me"; jj pena, "Fragments" and "We Carry the Dead"; Maria Esquinca, "I Stepped into a Series of Colored Rooms"; Melissa Lozada-Oliva, selection from Dreaming of You; Vanessa Angelica Villarreal, "Malinche"; Analicia Sotelo, "Virgin"; Laura Villareal, "(My)thology"; Gris Munoz, "Alter is Me"; Laura Villareal, "I Still Check for Monsters Before I Go To Bed"; and Deborah A. Miranda, "Advice from La Llorona," along with traditional and contemporary monster/myth narratives and horror and speculative poetry featuring nonhuman or transformed speakers.

Horror films discussed: The Substance (2024), The Babadook (2014), and Pan's Labyrinth (2006).

COURSE OUTLINE

Week 1: The Body Is the Monster — Fear, Embodiment, and the Uncanny

Craft focus: Establishing the body as a site of fear, vulnerability, desire, memory, and transformation. Students will examine how poets make the familiar body strange through precise sensory detail, metaphor, distortion, and shifts in perspective.

Main activity: The Body Remembers — Students select a body part, sensation, scar, illness, gesture, or physical memory and write from it without initially naming or explaining it. A second exercise transforms the familiar body into something uncanny or monstrous.

Texts discussed: Saul Hernandez, "How to Kill a Goat & Other Monsters"; Natalie Diaz, "The First Water Is the Body"; Franny Choi, "The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On"; Richard Siken, "Dirty Valentine"

Students produce: 1–2 new poem drafts centered on the body and a short generative exercise transforming an ordinary physical experience into something uncanny.

Week 2: What Frightens Us — Fear as Poetic Material

Craft focus: Moving beyond simply writing about fear to making the reader experience fear through tension, withholding, sound, repetition, pacing, image, and the strategic revelation of information.

Main activity: The Anatomy of Fear — Students identify something they fear and separate the experience into its sensory, emotional, environmental, and imaginative components. They then write a poem in which the source of fear is never directly named, allowing image and implication to create the threat. Workshop pieces from last week.

Texts discussed: Ada Limón, "The Leash"; Louise Glück, "The Drowned Children"; Natalie Shapero, selections from Hard Child; Jackie Sabbagh, "Having a Great Time Being Transgender in America Lately"

Students produce: A poem that creates fear through withholding, repetition, sonic pattern, and escalating imagery, rather than explicit explanation.

Week 3: The Grotesque — Distortion, Excess, and the Unbeautiful

Craft focus: Using grotesque imagery, bodily distortion, excess, abjection, juxtaposition, and sensory discomfort to disrupt the reader's expectations of beauty and coherence.

Main activity: Make It Strange — Students begin with an ordinary object, person, memory, or domestic scene and progressively distort it through three drafts: exaggeration, bodily transformation, and surreal disruption. The exercise asks students to consider when an image becomes grotesque and what that transformation makes possible. Workshop pieces from last week.

Texts discussed: Laurie Ann Guerrero, "Where I Will Not Let You Take Me"; jj pena, "Fragments" and "We Carry the Dead"; Maria Esquinca, "I Stepped into a Series of Colored Rooms"; Melissa Lozada-Oliva, selection from Dreaming of You

Students produce: A 2–3 page poem using grotesque imagery and distortion to transform an ordinary experience into something unsettling.

Week 4: Monsters We Inherit — Myth, Memory, and the Personal Archive

Craft focus: Using mythology, folklore, family history, cultural memory, and personal archives to create monsters that carry histories beyond the individual speaker. Students will explore how inherited stories can be rewritten, embodied, or transformed through poetry.

Main activity: Build Your Monster — Students create a monster from materials in their own personal archive: a family story, photograph, object, phrase, place, childhood fear, cultural myth, or inherited belief. They then write the monster as both character and archive, asking what it carries and what it protects.

Texts discussed: Vanessa Angelica Villarreal, "Malinche"; Analicia Sotelo, "Virgin"; Laura Villareal, "(My)thology"; traditional and contemporary monster/myth narratives

Students produce: A new poem or sequence that transforms an element of their personal or cultural archive into a monstrous figure.

Week 5: Becoming the Monster — Persona, Voice, and Transformation

Craft focus: Writing through persona and altered perspective; inhabiting voices that are nonhuman, monstrous, fragmented, or otherwise outside the conventional lyric "I." Students will experiment with voice, pronouns, syntax, diction, and dramatic monologue.

Main activity: The Monster Speaks — Students rewrite an existing poem from the perspective of its monster, wound, body part, fear, ghost, or other nonhuman presence. They then create a second version in which the speaker and monster begin to blur.

Texts discussed: Gris Munoz, "Alter is Me"; Laura Villareal, "I Still Check for Monsters Before I Go To Bed"; Deborah A. Miranda, "Advice from La Llorona"; horror poetry and speculative poetry featuring nonhuman or transformed speakers

Students produce: A 2–3 page persona poem written from the perspective of a monster or transformed/nonhuman speaker, plus a revision of one earlier course poem using techniques of voice and perspective. Students will select two earlier drafts for substantial revision and participate in guided peer feedback.

Week 6: After the Transformation — Revision, Resonance, and the Unresolved Ending

Craft focus: Revising poems so that horror and the grotesque operate at the level of form as well as subject. Students will examine endings, lineation, image patterns, repetition, silence, fragmentation, and ambiguity, with particular attention to what remains unresolved after the poem ends.

Main activity: The Cut / The Afterimage — Students bring one poem from the course through a structured revision process: identify the poem's central image or disturbance, cut explanatory language, intensify its strongest images, experiment with line breaks and stanza structure, and develop an ending that leaves an emotional or imagistic residue rather than explaining the poem. Student/instructor feedback on revised poems.

Horror films discussed: The Substance (2024); The Babadook (2014); Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Students produce: A final 5–8 page mini-portfolio containing 3 polished poems, including at least one poem substantially revised from an earlier week, plus a 1-page reflection identifying the craft strategies they used to transform fear, embodiment, memory, or the grotesque into poetic form.

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• A portfolio of 6–8 new poems and 3 polished, revised poems built through six weeks of generative prompts and focused revision
• A 3–5 page longer-form or sequence poem developing one of the course's central concerns—fear, the body, memory, inheritance, or transformation
• A personal archive of 12–15 generative writing exercises you can return to long after the workshop ends
• Concrete revision strategies for making horror and the grotesque operate at the level of form—lineation, image patterning, repetition, silence, and the unresolved ending
• Practical techniques for creating tension and fear on the page through image, sound, syntax, withholding, and juxtaposition
• Experience with persona and altered perspective, including writing through nonhuman, monstrous, and fragmented voices
• Workshop experience giving and receiving peer feedback in a supportive online writing class for poets at all levels

PAYMENT OPTIONS:

Tuition is $445 USD. You can pay for the course in full or use Shop Pay or Affirm to pay over time with equal Monthly Payments. Both options are available at checkout.

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

• Instructor: Bianca Alyssa Pérez
• Begins Thursday, January 21, 2027
• Class will meet weekly via Zoom on Thursdays, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM ET
• Tuition is $445 USD.