HLF-WWK Virtual Workshop Announcement
Out of Thin Air: Using Chance Operations to Generate Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction
with Sharon Mesmer
11.00 am U.S. Eastern, May 29, 2026
Himalayan Literature Festival & Writers Workshop (HLF-WWK)
Kathmandu, Nepal
Online Participation
To register, request a Zoom link, or receive more information, please contact:
Himalayan Literature Festival & Writers Workshop
hlfwwk2026@gmail.com
HLF Official Website
Worried that you’ve run out of ideas or lost inspiration? Not true — ideas and inspiration are everywhere, waiting to be plucked out of thin air. In this generative workshop, participants will explore three “chance operations” that can be used in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction writing.
A “chance operation” can take many forms, from tarot cards and the I-Ching to Google search results. In this workshop, however, the focus will be on word rounds and cut-ups. Through word rounds, the group will generate spontaneous three-word phrases that can be incorporated into new writing. In the cut-up exercise, participants will reassemble fragments from other writers’ texts, editing and expanding them into original creative work.
Beat novelist William S. Burroughs and artist Brion Gysin referred to this process as the “third mind method” — the first mind being the assembler, the second the original author(s), and the third the mysterious organizational principle that allows the work to come together in unexpected and fortuitous ways.
The third exercise remains a surprise.
Materials Needed
For the word rounds, please have a notebook, journal, or sheet of paper ready. Text fragments for the cut-up exercise will be provided during the workshop. For the surprise exercise, simply bring yourself.
About the Instructor
Sharon Mesmer is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist. Her poetry collections include Greetings from My Girlie Leisure Place (Bloof), The Virgin Formica (Hanging Loose), Annoying Diabetic Bitch (Combo), Half Angel/Half Lunch (Hard Press), and Vertigo Seeks Affinities (Belladonna). Four of her poems appear in Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (2nd edition, 2013).
Her recent work has appeared in Fence, New American Writing, American Poetry Review, On the Seawall, Posit, Maintenant, The Arts Fuse, Heavy Feather Review, and Australia’s Westerly, among others. Her poetry collection in Romanian translation, Chiar așa (“Just This”), was published by Charmides in 2021.
She is also the author of three fiction collections: The Empty Quarter and In Ordinary Time (Hanging Loose), and Ma Vie à Yonago (Hachette, in French translation). Her essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine/The Cut, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Commonweal, Teachers & Writers Magazine, The Girlfriend, Next Avenue, and the Brooklyn Rail, among others.
Her honors include a Jerome Foundation mentoring award and two New York Foundation for the Arts fellowships. She teaches creative writing at New York University and The New School.
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