Meet Ania Spyra
Ania Spyra is an immigrant writer, artist, and educator. Her most recent work can be found in Colorado Review, Critical Read, Indianapolis Review, Ancient Exchanges andGuernica. She’s an alumna of the Tin House Summer Workshop, currently at work on a novel. She is Demia Butler Chair in English Literature at Butler University.
Ania will teach the sessions “Writing the Character that is You” and “Is it a memoir when I remember so little?“ and participate on the panel “Harness Your Creative Energy.”
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All attendees will receive available session materials and have access to the recordings for 90 days following the event
Q&A with Ania
MWW: I love the idea of conducting “self-defining writing exercises” prior to working on nonfiction. In what ways does writing further this process of knowing and understanding the self?
AS: Writing is for me a form of meditation which allows my conscious self deeper into my unconscious. I journal daily in the mornings, and as I write down whatever comes to mind, snippets of dreams and plans and feelings, my attention lands on a forgotten event or image that still clings to my memory. Exploring it allows me to learn why I write what I write.
But it’s not only journaling that helps me define what matters; also in writing fiction I grow in understanding of the world and my selves. Much of what I have published as nonfiction I first explored as fiction to understand its truth. My fiction is either absurdist, based on dreams, or historical, coming from memory and research but I often recognize in it repeating motifs and obsessions. My drafting tends to take a long time, as I read my fictional narratives to learn what they tell me about my unacknowledged self and then re-write them as nonfiction.
MWW: How can the process of writing Creative nonfiction help us to navigate the spaces between what is lived and what is imagined; what is factual and what is remembered?
AS: Granted, the type of creative nonfiction I write –memoir – is quite different from other forms of nonfiction. There is much research involved, but also a lot of imagination. What I most enjoy about it is that it brings documents of fact – photographs, certificates etc. – to the purview of my imagination. Say, I know my grandmother didn’t graduate college because WWII started that same year. I have her student document – a booklet known in Polish as an “index” – that tells me she started her degree in philosophy at the Jagiellonian University; I even know the grades she received in her courses, including Philosophy and German Literature. What I don’t know is how she felt as a Silesian student in Cracow at that pivotal moment in history. How can I, having been a student, and someone who knew her as an adult, imagine those details? I see memoir as feeling into other people’s realities, and thus fiction inspired by facts.
MWW: In learning to harness our creative energy we often focus on getting *started.* When are the best times to allow our creative selves a rest, and what can that do for our work?
AS: The best time to rest is when every word you put down on the page sounds wrong, and the process is no longer all engrossing. At least that’s what I notice when I work on something for too long, in one sitting. I need to step away and do something else. My hope is that when I return, the page will feel new and inviting again.
MWW: What book (or resource) on writing craft do you recommend most often?
In terms of craft, I tend to recommend reading a lot and learning a foreign language to deepen and expand one’s understanding of language and literature. But in terms of books that had a huge impact on my writing life, I suggest Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Though it’s not a craft book per se, it helps me live a creative life. Coming back to your opening question, I find its exercises help defining the writing self. Before I read it – and I tried getting into it twice, finding originally that it didn’t match my life the first time I attempted it – I was quite obsessed with work, with the “you should be writing” mantra that is often presented to writers. Honestly, taking breaks, especially if they’re long, is still difficult, so re-framing some of the unusual and fun experiences, like going to a cactus concert or a dance performance, as “artist dates” – one of the strategies the book recommends for refilling your creative well – helps me live a more balanced and joyful life. And even though I might sound like a de-motivational speaker here, I do believe that your joyful life is more important than your writing!
Join us this July 10 – 12, 2025 at the Ball State Alumni Center in Muncie, Indiana—or virtually, from the comfort of your own computer—and see for yourself the wonderful things MWW has to offer!
Learn More About the Conference and Register
All attendees will receive available session materials and have access to the recordings for 90 days following the event
Announcing MWW25’s FREE Community Event!
Evening with an Author: Robin Lee Lovelace
Come join the Midwest Writers Workshop for a cozy evening with the talented author Robin Lee Lovelace at the Ball State Alumni Center. She’ll read from her book Savonne, Not Vonny and her Indiana Author Award Shortlisted collection, A Wild Region. Attendees will also learn about her writing journey and process. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to meet the author, ask questions, and connect with fellow book lovers!
Friday, July 11 from 6:30 – 8:00pm EST
Ball State Alumni Center
2800 West Bethel Ave/Muncie, IN 47304
This in-person event is free and open to the community, made possible with the support of Indiana Humanities and Glick Philanthropies.
RSVP for Evening with an Author
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Are You in a Writing Slump? Write With Us!
The “Wednesday Write-In with MWW” is a 30-minute Zoom session, first Wednesday of the month, where we get together and WRITE.
It might seem weird to have the Brady-Bunch Zoom screen filled with people not talking to each other, but please trust me: It works. It creates an accountability; it creates a space where your sole purpose is to get words down on paper. I might allow for a *little* chit-chat 🙂
To accommodate people’s availability, we will alternate morning sessions and evening sessions. Let’s dedicate 30 minutes of our day, once a month, to generating words and developing our craft!
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