With Chi Rainer Bornfree and Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan

This 90-minute generative writing workshop explores how explicitly writing to another person can add emotional depth, intellectual clarity, and addictive urgency to your prose.

In Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose describes  how she “tricked” herself into finishing her first novel by framing it as one character telling a story to another. This simple shift solved the classic problem of voice and narration by translating it into a more fundamental question: who is listening?

In an age in which anyone can broadcast from a social media pulpit but the art of listening is rare, addressing a specific person can transform how—and why—we write. Writing to a “you” often broadens the range of a piece while at the same time sharpening its stakes.

The epistolary or letter-writing form—whether in memoir (as in Bornfree and Srinivasan’s pandemic account The End Doesn’t Happen All At Once), fiction (such as A. S. Byatt’s Possession), or philosophical classics (Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius or Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet)—is a special case of the broader form of writing-to.  Writing letters can bridge divides between memoir and philosophy,  between the personal and the analytical, and between existential reflection and metaphysical inquiry.

In this workshop, participants will explore the potential of the epistolary form for their work through short readings, guided  discussion, and generative writing prompts designed to unlock new  approaches to voice, argument, and storytelling.

This workshop is ideal for writers, philosophers, critics, students, and curious readers who want to deepen their thinking while experimenting with new forms of expression. No prior experience with letter-writing is required.

Please bring something to write with and something to write on.

Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan is a scholar of contemporary Asian American, South Asian Anglophone, and global literatures. Her published works include the monograph Overdetermined: How Indian English Literature Becomes Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone and the book of essays What is We? (in The Philosopher's own "The New Basics"). She currently teaches English at Rice University.

Chi Rainer Bornfree is a writer, philosopher, and organizer. They recently spearheaded AI for the People, a multi-disciplinary vision of human-AI symbiosis, and previously published a regular column "Liquid Philosophy" in The Philosopher magazine, where they served as assistant editor. They also co-founded the Activist Graduate School and the mid-Hudson branch of the Still-Coviding Movement.

Tharoor Srinivasan and Rainer Bornfree co-wrote the epistolary memoir, The End Doesn't Happen All at Once. We will be raffling off five hard copies for this workshop!

*A limited number of free places are available for those who cannot  afford to pay. If you wish to be considered, please contact us at: thephilosopher1923@gmail.com. Free places will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

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