Fiction Workshop

This class will combine weekly discussions of student work with writing exercises and readings in critical theory and technique. We'll also read fiction from published writers whose work serves a given discussion. I hope to introduce "new" writers to the class—writers who may not have a book out but have published a particularly beautiful story in a literary magazine—alongside the more established canon. Rather than cling to what we "know" in artful, literary fiction, I'm a firm believer in Cynthia Ozick's tenet: "When you write about what you don't know, this means you begin to think about the world at large. You begin to think beyond the home-thoughts. You enter dream and imagination...it's our will to enter the world...." The most grounded realism needs to fill the reader's mind like a dream, an unbroken spell. It needs to leave the reader a complete stranger to its world, even after they've finished with it. I want to get the class thinking about entering the broader world, about writing stories that don't ever leave their readers.