Modern Cosmic Horror – A Weekend Workshop with Premee Mohamed
When: May 16 – 17, 2026 @ 4PM – 7PM UTC (click here to convert to your timezone)
Where: Online over Zoom
Attendance Supported by Donations – Apply for Scholarship below!
Only 15 Seats Available
It can be difficult to craft effective cosmic horror. How do you build a suitably powerful, incomprehensible antagonist and maintain the sense of enormity and scale throughout the narrative? How do you do that while also keeping up the stakes and tension for your characters? And avoiding some of the stale tropes that plague the genre’s foundational works?
In this two-day class, award-winning author Premee Mohamed will go beyond tentacled gods and non-euclidean geometries to explore not only the history of cosmic horror, its whys and hows, but also its modern transformation, especially in the hands of marginalised writers. We’ll also touch on how various media can add to the form, from video games to audio dramas and beyond.
Through in-class discussion and with Premee’s instruction, you’ll learn how to use the tools, techniques, and storytelling forms that will allow you to craft the unsettling stories of your heart.
Please note that this class will be recorded.
Who Should Take This Workshop?
This class is for BIPOC writers in any stage in their writing career.
About the Instructor
Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, Ignyte, Locus, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has also been a finalist for the Hugo, British Fantasy, British Science Fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Crawford awards. In 2024, she was the Edmonton Public Library writer-in-residence, and she has taught at establishments including the Banff Institute for the Arts, the Clarion Workshop, and the Carl Brandon Society. She has judged short fiction contests for CBC and Alberta Views Magazine and can be found on her website at www.premeemohamed.com
Scholarships
This class is fully supported by the generous contributions of the Carl Brandon Society’s donors, and so attendance is free and requires only filling this scholarship application. We have limited seats available, and the scholarship deadline is May 4th by midnight UTC.
Attending the live class consists of participating in the live discussions and Q&As, as well as getting the recording after.
If you would also like to support this class or other classes like it, you can do so via Humanitix here. All contributions are appreciated, and donations of 50 USD or above will also receive a recording of the class as a gift two weeks after the class concludes.
Technical Requirements
This workshop will take place over Zoom, so please ensure that your device is compatible with Zoom beforehand.
A microphone or working camera are not necessary to participate. We’ll be monitoring the chat and relaying any questions you type to the instructor.
Accessibility
This class will have Zoom’s auto-generated closed-captions available. For more of Zoom’s accessibility features, please click here. Discussions will be via voice or Zoom’s chat feature.
If you have any questions, contact our class coordinator Yasmine at classes@carlbrandon.org and we’ll get back to you ASAP!