Craft Classes

Participants will attend an intimate class on some aspect of story-writing craft, taught by a writer whose work has been published in the Best American Short Stories® series. In order to allow for the greatest interaction between teachers and participants, each class is limited to a maximum of 12 students.

You may indicate your top two preferences for class topic and/or teacher when you register; however, seminars will fill up quickly, and if neither of your top choices is available, we will assign you to a different class.

Craft Class Topics

"The Ending" with Amy Bloom — THIS CLASS IS FULL!

The end is the place where the writer lays down his cards and commits. If life is, as Kierkegaard said, lived forward and understood backward, it may also be that way with fiction. A good ending becomes, not the tidy bow or the O. Henry sweet redemption, but the final, essential stone on which the whole structure sits. So, when to hold, when to fold, when to walk away.

"Memorable Characters" with Lan Samantha Chang

As readers, we turn to our favorite stories and novels to acquaint ourselves with the fascinating people inside them. As writers, we must imagine such characters and render them on the page. In this class, we'll discuss the characters that compell us, and how to create them. What techniques of characterization can we learn (and unlearn) from observing people in real life? How do characters unfold and change in the course of a story? A novel?

"Dialogue in Fiction" with Nell Freudenberger

What makes writing dialogue both exciting and intimidating? How is a conversation between two people different from one among many? What can fiction writers learn from dramatic writing? We'll look at examples from novels and short stories, and think about the distance between what characters think and what they say. We'll also talk about the formal choices different authors make in representing dialogue on the page. Why is good dialogue in fiction often nothing like what you overhear on the street?

"What You Don't (Yet) Know: Research and Writing Fiction" with Elizabeth Graver

Writers are often told "write what you know," but in this workshop, we will look at the place of the unknown in fiction. How might you go about setting your work in another place or time or telling it from a perspective very different from your own? We'll look at how research (broadly defined) can both enlarge your fictional canvas and allow you to move further inside your characters, and we'll do a few writing exercises using historical materials as a springboard.

"Revision" with Karl Iagnemma

For most writers, the revision process is a saving grace: a chance to overhaul muddled, lifeless prose before it sees publication. We will discuss various revision techniques, and study examples of stories at various stages of the revision process.

"Eliciting The Second Good Idea" with Alice Mattison

What to do when a story you've begun with excitement simply stops on page three. It will be helpful if one or more participants bring stalled openings, so we can try as a group to discover stories waiting to be written.

"Looking for a Story" with Jill McCorkle

A discussion about the various ways stories begin and evolve, with an emphasis on structure and revision. Class members are encouraged to bring in bits of ideas they have wanted to pursue but which, for whatever reason, have never gotten off the ground.

"How Shape Makes Meaning in the Short Story" with Sue Miller — THIS CLASS IS FULL!

We will look carefully together at several published stories, discussing how the arrangement of the elements in the stories help form the sense the reader takes from it. I'd like class participants to have read "Bullet in the Brain", by Tobias Wolff; "The Student", by Anton Chekhov; "The Progress of Love", by Alice Munro; and "A Good Man is Hard to Find", by Flannery O'Connor.

"Great Beginnings" with Edith Pearlman

Opening paragraphs establish tone, suggest place, hint at trouble. Their writer, waving his words, leans out of a moving train. Hop aboard, he begs the reader on the platform; join me; the destination is worth the trip. In fact, beginnings are usually written last, after the trip is made and the destination reached. We'll talk about how, once we've finished our story, to start it.

"The Importance of Close Reading" with Jim Shepard

Much of what goes on in a workshop is covertly or openly designed to cultivate the participants' abilities in close reading. There's a good reason for this, since the participants must improve as readers in order to improve as writers. A class dedicated to the proposition that as readers of literature we should be both exacting and optimistic; wearying, in that we believe anything can be improved, and a source of hope, in that we believe anything can be transformed.

"Laughter in the Dark: Humor in the Short Story" with Jonathan Wilson

"'Jokes,' he said, 'As a writer that's your main trouble'" Thus speaks the father in Grace Paley's wonderful story "A Conversation with my Father." "You have a nice sense of humor" he continues "but I see you can't tell a plain story." Of course a part of Grace Paley's brilliance lies in the way that she integrates humor and jokes into her stories, and how, in fact, her stories would not be at all what they are without them. It's a dangerous thing to discuss, and certainly to analyze humor — one always runs the risk of a deadly humorless exchange, but I’d like to try to appreciate the importance of lightness, especially in dark tales. Tragic or difficult content is often carried best in a basket made of ironies, wit and snappy dialogue viz. more or less all Grace Paley's stories. As writers jokes may be the least of our troubles.