creative writing school
Module 6: Worlds Beyond
structure
Introduction
Theory
Inspirations
Creative exercises
Stay grounded & motivated
Share your text with us
Theory
Inspirations
Creative exercises
Stay grounded & motivated
Share your text with us
introduction
This lesson is an invitation to shift perception. To write from the edges of what is known, and to trust what we see when our eyes are closed. Parallel realities are not a fiction. They are a tool. A lens. A method. A radical reorientation of what matters. They live beneath, beside, within — and they are always political. In this session, we’ll ask: what truths are hidden in the “unreal”? What can imagined realities reveal about the failures and violences of the so-called real? And how can writing become a portal to other worlds — not as an escape, but as a return to what has been forgotten, excluded, erased?
We will move through philosophical reflections and artistic practices that trouble the idea of a singular reality. We will meet the obsessive and controversial world of Henry Darger. And we will write, from a space of deep listening, to what wishes to exist through us.
We will move through philosophical reflections and artistic practices that trouble the idea of a singular reality. We will meet the obsessive and controversial world of Henry Darger. And we will write, from a space of deep listening, to what wishes to exist through us.
theory
To speak of parallel realities is to question the foundations of Western metaphysics — the idea that there is one true, objective world, and that everything else is illusion. This belief, rooted in Enlightenment rationalism, has shaped the colonial, capitalist, heteropatriarchal order. But what if reality is plural? What if other worlds are not only possible, but already here?
In The Plurality of Worlds, philosopher David Lewis proposes that all possible worlds are as real as the actual world, just not accessible to us. He calls this theory “modal realism.” Though criticized by many as metaphysically extravagant, it challenges our assumptions about what exists. If other worlds are as real as this one, what is “this one” made of?
Yet Lewis remains trapped in logic games. Feminist, decolonial, and Indigenous thinkers go further. Gloria Anzaldúa, in Borderlands/La Frontera, speaks of Nepantla — the in-between space where multiple realities intersect. She writes:
“I change myself, I change the world. My soul makes itself through the creative act.”
Here, parallel realities are not hypothetical but lived. They are the experience of existing in contradiction, across borders of language, race, gender, geography. Writing becomes a political act of survival — a way to hold multiple truths that are otherwise erased.
In African and Afro-diasporic cosmologies, parallel realities are not a concept but a cosmological foundation. The visible world is only one layer of existence. In the Yoruba tradition, the Orun (spirit world) and the Aiye (earthly world) coexist, interpenetrate, influence each other. What happens in one is reflected in the other. There is no hierarchy — only communication, ritual, and balance.
Writing parallel realities, then, is not speculative fiction. It is justice work. It is reclaiming what modernity has buried: ancestral knowledge, collective memory, imaginative resistance. To write a parallel reality is not to flee, but to return — to listen, to witness, to make space for the unseen.
In The Plurality of Worlds, philosopher David Lewis proposes that all possible worlds are as real as the actual world, just not accessible to us. He calls this theory “modal realism.” Though criticized by many as metaphysically extravagant, it challenges our assumptions about what exists. If other worlds are as real as this one, what is “this one” made of?
Yet Lewis remains trapped in logic games. Feminist, decolonial, and Indigenous thinkers go further. Gloria Anzaldúa, in Borderlands/La Frontera, speaks of Nepantla — the in-between space where multiple realities intersect. She writes:
“I change myself, I change the world. My soul makes itself through the creative act.”
Here, parallel realities are not hypothetical but lived. They are the experience of existing in contradiction, across borders of language, race, gender, geography. Writing becomes a political act of survival — a way to hold multiple truths that are otherwise erased.
In African and Afro-diasporic cosmologies, parallel realities are not a concept but a cosmological foundation. The visible world is only one layer of existence. In the Yoruba tradition, the Orun (spirit world) and the Aiye (earthly world) coexist, interpenetrate, influence each other. What happens in one is reflected in the other. There is no hierarchy — only communication, ritual, and balance.
Writing parallel realities, then, is not speculative fiction. It is justice work. It is reclaiming what modernity has buried: ancestral knowledge, collective memory, imaginative resistance. To write a parallel reality is not to flee, but to return — to listen, to witness, to make space for the unseen.
inspiration
Henry Darger (1892–1973) was a janitor in Chicago. He lived alone in a small apartment for decades. After his death, his landlord discovered a manuscript of over 15,000 pages, accompanied by hundreds of illustrations and watercolors. The title: The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. A parallel reality — massive, obsessive, disturbing, poetic.
Darger’s world centers on seven young girls who lead a rebellion against a violent adult regime that enslaves children. The narrative is grotesque and tender. The images are both enchanting and horrifying. Girls are depicted with both male and female genitalia. There are scenes of torture, war, ecstasy. Darger uses collage, watercolor, and traced figures from coloring books and advertising.
This world — the “Realms of the Unreal” — is not escapism. It is trauma transfigured. Darger was institutionalized as a child after being labeled “feeble-minded.” He never recovered from that rupture. His entire life can be read as a protest against adult cruelty and institutional violence. His art is the parallel reality he constructed to process — and resist — a world that had no room for him.
There is no easy way to "interpret" Darger. He troubles the boundaries between outsider and visionary, art and therapy, beauty and horror. Some critics see him as a dangerous fantasist. Others as a mystic. What is certain is that his work refuses the categories imposed on it.
As Michael Moon writes:
“What Darger creates is not an allegory of the world he lived in but a cosmos that insists on its own terms — full of grief, resistance, longing, and impossible possibility.”
In relation to dystopia, Darger’s world is not unlike our own — only more honest. It reveals the brutality of systems that claim to protect children while abandoning them. It shows how innocence is fetishized and violated. It asks, without sentimentality: What kind of world do we allow to exist? And what could exist instead?
Darger’s world centers on seven young girls who lead a rebellion against a violent adult regime that enslaves children. The narrative is grotesque and tender. The images are both enchanting and horrifying. Girls are depicted with both male and female genitalia. There are scenes of torture, war, ecstasy. Darger uses collage, watercolor, and traced figures from coloring books and advertising.
This world — the “Realms of the Unreal” — is not escapism. It is trauma transfigured. Darger was institutionalized as a child after being labeled “feeble-minded.” He never recovered from that rupture. His entire life can be read as a protest against adult cruelty and institutional violence. His art is the parallel reality he constructed to process — and resist — a world that had no room for him.
There is no easy way to "interpret" Darger. He troubles the boundaries between outsider and visionary, art and therapy, beauty and horror. Some critics see him as a dangerous fantasist. Others as a mystic. What is certain is that his work refuses the categories imposed on it.
As Michael Moon writes:
“What Darger creates is not an allegory of the world he lived in but a cosmos that insists on its own terms — full of grief, resistance, longing, and impossible possibility.”
In relation to dystopia, Darger’s world is not unlike our own — only more honest. It reveals the brutality of systems that claim to protect children while abandoning them. It shows how innocence is fetishized and violated. It asks, without sentimentality: What kind of world do we allow to exist? And what could exist instead?
creative exercise
I have uploaded six drawings by Henry Darger for this exercise.
You will have six writing prompts, each one linked to a different image, to a different parallel reality.
The time frame increases with each exercise, allowing you to go deeper into the world of the drawing and into your own writing.
Let the image speak. Let your intuition guide your hand. Don’t censor, don’t overthink. Begin with a sentence, a sound, a color, a gesture. Each writing is a portal — each drawing a crack in the surface of the “real.”
You will have six writing prompts, each one linked to a different image, to a different parallel reality.
The time frame increases with each exercise, allowing you to go deeper into the world of the drawing and into your own writing.
- 1st drawing – write for 3 minutes
- 2nd drawing – write for 5 minutes
- 3rd drawing – write for 7 minutes
- 4th drawing – write for 10 minutes
- 5th drawing – write for 15 minutes
- 6th drawing – write for 20 minutes
Let the image speak. Let your intuition guide your hand. Don’t censor, don’t overthink. Begin with a sentence, a sound, a color, a gesture. Each writing is a portal — each drawing a crack in the surface of the “real.”
stay grounded and motivated!
"Parallel realities — that’s not an easy one.
We all belong to a shared reality, but within it exist parallel interpretations, and each of them holds its own truth. Parallel realities offer the possibility of plural perspectives, plural points of view. We breathe the same air, live under the same sky — yet we perceive the world through different lenses.
Our task is to witness this difference. To hold space for it. To sometimes share our perspective, and in other moments, to keep it. It’s a constant movement, a dance between giving and receiving, expressing and listening.
Dualism — the yes/no, the black/white — and the monotheistic urge for the one single truth make this difficult. We’ve been trained to believe there is only one valid way of seeing, and the rest is wrong, suspicious, or broken.
But parallel realities are an invitation to see otherwise. To shift from judgment to curiosity. To let go of righteousness and step into generosity.
It takes a lifetime to unlearn what we were taught about truth. A lifetime to grow into a space where multiple realities can exist without needing to compete.
And that space — that tender in-between — is where art is born."
—Anna Ádám
Founder of the School of Disobedience
We all belong to a shared reality, but within it exist parallel interpretations, and each of them holds its own truth. Parallel realities offer the possibility of plural perspectives, plural points of view. We breathe the same air, live under the same sky — yet we perceive the world through different lenses.
Our task is to witness this difference. To hold space for it. To sometimes share our perspective, and in other moments, to keep it. It’s a constant movement, a dance between giving and receiving, expressing and listening.
Dualism — the yes/no, the black/white — and the monotheistic urge for the one single truth make this difficult. We’ve been trained to believe there is only one valid way of seeing, and the rest is wrong, suspicious, or broken.
But parallel realities are an invitation to see otherwise. To shift from judgment to curiosity. To let go of righteousness and step into generosity.
It takes a lifetime to unlearn what we were taught about truth. A lifetime to grow into a space where multiple realities can exist without needing to compete.
And that space — that tender in-between — is where art is born."
—Anna Ádám
Founder of the School of Disobedience
Photo: Extrait d'une oeuvre d'Henry Darger - [Musée d'Art Moderne / Roger-Viollet © 2015 Kiyoko Lerner / ADAGP, Paris]