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To Disturb and Delight: Building The Speculative World

A Writing Workshop

with Andrea Rogers, author of The Art Thieves and Man Made Monsters

Horror and sci-Fi often travel together. World building sometimes requires the donning of GENRE colored glasses. We’ll survey the characteristics of the genres and sub genres of horror and futurisms we’re interested in writing. As a reader of the genre, what are your expectations? What are the consequences and dangers of writing new and old worlds? How do we create worlds that allow hope when it feels like the world is on fire? If this… then what…  

We can talk about things that have personally bothered us in a genre we other wise enjoy, how the political shows up in the personal choices characters make, and what kind of hard questions we have to answer in creating and revising a world.  

We’ll also have fun doing some writing. “Unbridled storytelling is just as important as storytelling with a direct message.” -Quinta Brunson to Trevor Noah on his podcast, What Now? 

Andrea L. Rogers writes in a variety of genres, creating work for all ages. She is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a graduate of the Low Rez MFA program at the Institute for American Indian Arts. She has a B.A. in English from the University of Tulsa and an MFA in Creative Writing-Fiction. She grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but currently lives in Arkansas where she is pursuing a Ph.d in English at the University of Arkansas. She is the mom of three daughters.

At IAIA, she was mentored by strong Indigenous writers and teachers. While there, she completed her short story collection Man Made Monsters, a meditation on love, loneliness, family, and the monsters in society. Cherokee people are centered in this collection, along with a cast of vampires, werewolves, zombies, aliens, ghosts, two handsome Princes, and a Goatboy. Her short stories have been published in Transmotion; Kweli Journal; Yellow Medicine Review; The Santa Fe Literary Review; Waxwing, The Massachusetts Review, and forthcoming from The River Styx. Capstone published her children’s book Mary and the Trail of Tears which was included on the best books of 2020 by both NPR and American Indians in Children’s Literature. Her essay “My Oklahoma History” was included in You Too? 25 Voices Share Their #MeToo Stories. Her short story “The Ballad of Maggie Wilson” is included in Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids, a MG short story Anthology from Heartdrum, an imprint of Harper Collins. Her picture book called, When We Gather and illustrated by Madeline Goodnight (Chickasaw) for Heartdrum will be published in May 2024. Her Cherokee futurism The Art Thieves will be out in Fall 2024. Her picture book Chooch Helped, illustrated by Rebecca Kunz (Cherokee), won the 2025 Caldecott Medal. 

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