In fiction, the most effective settings play a significant role in shaping the characters and story, but don't overwhelm it. How to achieve this striking balance, where readers can feel as though they are transported into the world of the story and don't skim over passages, i.e. the parts that Elmore Leonard called "the parts […]
The Irish virtuoso of the short story William Trevor famously said “I think all writing is experimental.... I experiment all the time but the experiments are hidden.” In this class, we’ll look at writing that bends reality–and occasionally breaks it–and plays with language, structure, form, and narrative in a wide variety of ways. But this […]
Sometimes writers avoid research, while others might lose themselves in it, using it as a sneaky way to avoid the actual writing. In this class, we’ll aim to navigate between these extremes and find ways to use research to make your writing come more alive. We’ll explore how to take an expansive view of your […]
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In our attention-span-challenged times, it takes a certain nerve to write long sentences, yet recent Booker longlisted books include Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones, and Lucy Ellman's Ducks, Newburyport, all of which revel in them. How do we explain this? Sentence length can seem almost accidental, a byproduct of style or point […]
We've all heard about adaptation, and the phrase, "The book was better than the film" has become something of a cliché. But for those of us who are avid viewers of movies and TV shows, one might wonder what we can learn from directors, screenwriters, cinematographer, and even actors. In this class, we'll go over […]
This class is designed to provide you with a stimulating, supportive, and accountable space for generating work. Over the course of 4 weeks, students will come together to brainstorm ideas, set their own individual goals, produce as much writing as possible, receive on-the-spot feedback, and learn how to build a more sustainable writing and revision […]
We've all familiar with the concept of adaptation, and the phrase, "The book was better than the film" has become something of a cliche. But for those of us who are avid viewers of movies and TV shows and also writers, one might wonder what we can learn from directors, screenwriters, cinematographer, and even actors. […]
Many fiction writers read poetry avidly and carefully, and some say that they will read poems immediately before sitting down to write. In this class, we'll read poems and examine how their effects can transcend genre, offering ways to sharpen our images, to attune our rhythms, to play with metaphor, and to take calculated (and […]