Natalya Sukhonos will lead a sestina writing workshop at the Bethlehem Public Library on February 5, 2024, at 6:00 pm.
Created by troubadours in the 12th century, the sestina is a poetic form of patterned repetition. It relies on key end words that are repeated in a certain highly codified order. The sestina is a fascinating form in that it was used by Sydney, Spenser, Dante Gabriel Rosetti and others in the 19th century, but it also became a popular poetic form in the 20th century with poets like Elizabeth Bishop, spend fifteen minutes analyzing how the form is connected to the meaning, and then spend the rest of the workshop writing sestinas, sharing them in pairs, sharing out with the rest of the group, and reflecting on the process.
Natalya Sukhonos hails from Odesa, Ukraine and is bilingual in Russian and English. She also speaks Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Natalya Sukhonos has a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University, and her area of research is 20th-century Russian and Latin American literature. Natalya has taught literature, humanities, and writing at Harvard, Stanford, UC Davis, Zayed University, as well as the Stanford Continuing Studies Program. Natalya teaches Creative Writing at SUNY Albany. Her latest book is “A Stranger Home” from Moon Pie Press. You can learn more about Natalya at www.natalyasukhonos.com and at www.personal-professors.com. Natalya lives Upstate New York with her husband and two daughters.
This workshop is sponsored by the Hudson Valley Writers Guild.
