PROFILE: Close Reading Studio, Brooklyn NY

A renegade writing school by Ash Pattison-Scott

Close Reading Studio is a “renegade writing school” founded by Ash Pattison-Scott, a writer originally from California and now based in Brooklyn. I met Ash while we were both pursuing our MFAs, and I would often ride with her to Westchester, where we’d sit around a table and ask a lot of questions. Around the same time, she began developing her experimental writing school, hosting readings in her apartment and in local bookstores, and extending the invitation to other writers around her. Since then, the project has taken different shapes—most recently this January with a generative writing workshop on partying, where the group went out together afterward, a spell for surviving winter. Close Reading Studio is a project that honors fixations and learning from them. It is also a collaborative practice, evolving as it learns from its students and from the world. I reached out to Ash to find out how it’s going:

Ash Pattison-Scott by Lærke Rose Xin Xin Møllegaard

“Originally, I started Close Reading Studio because I wanted to bring the experience of an MFA program outside of the walls of academia. While I loved my MFA program, upending your life to make writing the center of your world isn’t an option for everyone.

Now, I can feel the heart of this project shifting. I’m really interested in working with people who don’t consider themselves writers. I mean, I love working with writer writers. But there’s something special about witnessing someone channel their life and experience and imagination onto the page for the first time. I’m always blown away. Especially now, when human attention and cognition are getting chopped up and sold for parts as we march ourselves into technofeudalism. Yuck.”

In terms of inspiration for the project and its guiding vision, Ash cites Sophia Dahlin’s Generative Writing Poetry Workshops as a central influence, alongside a tradition of DIY writers and artists. Its core principle is simple: paying attention and thinking with others.

“Imagine a dystopia where you have to pay in order to engage your mind. The world would have you believe that thinking isn’t fun, that we want to be “smooth, smooth brain” or “lobotomized”. My goal as a teacher is to show students how to take pleasure in reading closely. The more we pay attention, the more we think, the more becomes available to us as writers and artists.

I’m inspired by Kate Zambreno’s tremendous capacity for learning, by Kathy Acker’s relentlessness in actualizing her vision for her work. Even Eileen Myles taught creative writing workshops by hanging up flyers in the Lower East Side in the 80s and 90s. I’m not doing anything new.”

A full house at The Word Is Change

The project is always changing, a direct result of paying attention and adapting to people and the day.

“My classes used to be online only, now I teach some of them in my living room.

In January, I taught a class called Party for You, where we read novels and theory on nightlife then partied together after class. It was one part ethnography, one part inspiration research, one part hedonism. I loved it, and I think the students did too.

I’ve also seen significant changes in how much time and attention students have for homework. Everyone is overworked, underslept, desperate for connection – so it’s difficult to lock yourself in a room for an hour or two a day to read and write. So my next class will have no homework. All reading and writing will be done in class together and we’ll focus on short-form work.”

Reading list from Party for You

For Ash, motivation comes from her students and from experiencing their writing.

“It means the world to me to hear their stories, to watch them struggle with the zany fiction or theory I assign, and then see it change their writing. Everyone is so smart, so creative, so funny. Last February, I taught a class called I HAVE A CRUSH, which explored sex, desire, longing, and crushes.

I didn’t spare my students an ounce of suffering. We read Margery Kempe by Robert Glück and The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek in the same class. Those works beautifully excavate some of the ugliest feelings in the human experience: betrayal, abandonment, the kind of limerence-induced mania that makes you feel tender about your lover’s shit (thank you for that scene, Glück). In retrospect, assigning those works in the same class feels quite intense, but you know it really brought everyone together. We shared moments of quiet, even a few tears as students related to the characters. After class ended, students would go to dinner or grab drinks, while I went home and wondered if I spent enough time close reading sentences with them.

I’m not sure if that class wanted to publish their work, it was so deeply personal, which is fine with me. Publishing isn’t always the goal. I think we should have different aims: feeling recognized by people you respect, making yourself proud of your own abilities, living up to your own creative vision. To me these are more important and actually much more difficult to achieve.

But of course, I’m so proud of everything my students do. I’m really a freak about it. Madeline Howard started a reading series called Late to The Party Press and is working on her novel at Brooklyn College’s MFA, Alina Patrick has published several books of poems and photography, Kelsey Keaton got into the Tin House Workshop, Simon Chen has such a talent for writing malaise and is now at Pratt’s MFA in Writing.

What’s funny is students take my classes, become friends, and then realize they’ve been attending the same events around NYC all along. I guess that’s what I want really: I want to give students books to make them feel less alone in their lived experience and new friends that they can vibe with.”

As for next steps, she wants to find different kinds of spaces and extend the project to new people.

“I’d love to partner with a bookstore in NYC that wants to have a home for reading and writing and creativity.

I’d like to launch a magazine or press alongside the studio to publish new voices. I’d also love more writers and artists to teach in the studio so hit me up on Instagram @closereadingstudio or @ashpattisonscott! I’m also open to receiving messages through the ether.”

And her advice for people wanting to do something like this?

”Oh just do it. Don’t wait for permission. No one has the authority to grant you permission anyways. I mean we all need things to do. Otherwise we’re going to be on our phones until we’re dead.”

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