Gaiutra Bahadur
A sack given by an enslaved mother to her daughter when she’s sold away, found 150 years later at a flea market. A Gideon Bible in Spanish, carried by a migrant across the U.S.-Mexico border, then discarded in a detention center. A cello made from a horseshoe crab found on a beach, somewhat alive again in the hands of a busker. Each artifact is also a fact. For nonfiction writers, objects can be both symbol and source. They can carry a story, or reveal it. They can prompt investigation as well as memory. In this craft studio, we’ll read together short excerpts from writing that puts objects to work. And you’ll produce a piece of creative nonfiction in which you write through an object.
Gaiutra Bahadur is the author of Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture, shortlisted for the 2014 Orwell Prize. She’s a critic, essayist, and journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Review, The Nation, The New Republic, and The Guardian, among other publications.
Her work has been selected for Best American Essays 2024, and she has won literary residencies at MacDowell and the Bellagio Center in Italy. Born in Guyana and raised there and in the United States, she teaches writing, literature and journalism as an associate professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
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PREE is an online platform for lively, vital writing from the Caribbean. Our scope is wide, ranging from fiction and poetry to art writing, non-fiction, interviews and experimental short to medium form film, videos and texts. We are the pre-eminent forum for writing in, from and on the region, a showcase for the exceptional prose and creative expression the Caribbean is fast developing a reputation for.
PREE Writing Studio 
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