Call for Submissions: Six Words on Work, Six In Schools, and More
Six Words on Work (Reworked!)
Back in 2011, Six-Word Memoirs created a community-contributed book called Six Words on Work, featuring pragmatic and poetic glimpses into a wide array of work lives. A decade later, the work world looks quite different, and so for SixContest #140, we invite you to share six-word snapshots of work life today. Our favorites will be published in our updated version of the book, coming out in 2022.
Sixers so far have mentioned the elephant in the room (“No excuses! Zoom meetings happen anywhere.” —PoeticPisces) and in the house (“Home is work, where to live?” —Jubileus). Some are reassuringly relatable about productivity (“Let's do this! Yeah, maybe later.” —JAlexis), while others offer motivation (“More you do, easier it gets” —ColbyBateman). Express your frustrations and reveal your secrets about working from home. One short-form scribe who submits before October 15 will win a Six-Word Memoir book of their choice. And at least fifty writers will have their work memoirs included in the upcoming edition of Six Words About Work.
Classroom of the Month: Pandemic Stories at the University of Washington
When Covid changed the educational landscape, the first classes to go online during the pandemic faced a major challenge: How could a teacher create connection among students with a class the size of a screen?
When UC Berkeley professor Stephen Rosenbaum headed to the University of Washington as a guest lecturer in a course cross-listed in the Departments of Law, Societies & Justice, Disability Studies Program, and Comparative History of Ideas Program, he brought a diverse group of students together by having them write about their pandemic lives in six words. Rosenbaum, who was inspired by Larry Smith’s New York Times column “The Pandemic in Six-Word Memoirs, explains, “People went back and forth, and I replied to some and tried to get them to post elsewhere, knowing that this really had a life of its own.” A self-described “verbose” speaker and writer himself, Rosenbaum always encourages his students to be succinct — and they took the challenge of spilling their biggest revelations and frustrations in six words quite impressively.
Read more about Rosenbaum’s journey with his students on our Six in Schools blog and explore the different ways educators are using the format to build community and instruct their students.
Hey Teachers! Make Your Own Classroom Book
As the school year began, we launched our “Six In Schools” pilot program with 75 pioneering teachers who are now creating Six-Word Memoir classroom book for their more than 200 classes this fall. Making a book to celebrate students’ individual identities and a classroom’s collective spirit is both a great way to get students writing and also a blast. Now, we’re opening the program up to all educators later this fall — more in the video below. And if you’d like create your own classroom book, contact us on the Six In Schools site.
Get Your Free Classroom Kit
Short Cuts: Six-Word Reviews
From Substack: Culture is a story, and Anne Helen Peterson knows how to tell it. Not surprisingly, Peterson is a writer and professor of—you guessed it—cultural studies and uses Culture Study as a platform to interview interesting and underrepresented figures, engage community, and encourage a more critical lens on what we accept as natural. Detailed and community-driven, Peterson curates a well-crafted mosaic of the nuances within society: from the controversy of MLMs, to every company making their way into your digital inbox.
Six-Word Memoirs intern Ayusha Mahajan's Six-Word Review: “Scholar and writer scrutinizes societal matrices.”
From the World: With the right combination of camaraderie, comedy, and competition, the Distractible podcast is exactly as its name claims. The hosts, a trio of long-time best friends, relate unbelievable and fantastic tales. Memorable stories range from a dunk tank filled with hair removal product to genetically engineered ferrets that eliminate body odor (and that’s just in the first two episodes). Rife with distractions, you’d be hard-pressed to find more chaotic friendships with such amazing chemistry. You can find Distractible on Spotify.
Six-Word Memoirs' Danielle Shum's Review: “Comedy triumvirate weave inventive, lawless narratives.”