Immigrant and International Writing: Fiction Focus

This workshop is designed for fiction writers who are interested in producing stories about migration and/or stories set outside of the United States. Classes will focus primarily on discussion of student work, but will also include more advanced craft lectures and discussion of published writing by authors such as Viet Thanh Nguyen, Elena Ferrante, Aleksandar Hemon, Mia Alvar, Mariana Enriquez, Azam Ahmed, Mavis Gallant, Juan Gabriel Vasquez, Chang-Rae Lee, Jhumpa Lahiri, Orhan Pamuk, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, among others. We will explore and discuss socio-cultural and political context, intended audience, non-American fiction traditions, and immigrant narratives. As this is an intermediate course and we will thus not cover basic craft topics, it is recommended that you have some workshop experience prior to joining this class.

The goal of this class is to write and revise two short stories, up to 25 pages each, which we will workshop as a class. In addition to receiving verbal feedback, you will also get in-depth written comments from the instructor. While novelists may find the creation of self-contained narratives useful, workshopping novel chapters is discouraged.

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