Class Description
There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.” So wrote F.Scott Fitzgerald in his short story, “The Sensible Thing.” The compass of love, its many manifestations, expressed in brief, is also the subject of the popular New York Times series “Modern Love,” which pitches itself as “a series of weekly reader-submitted essays that explore the joys and tribulations of love.”
In line with the celebrated column, this workshop will encourage you to write pithy scenes and first-person narratives which illustrate your version of love in the 21st century. We will also plumb the depths of longer forms, profounder questions, which examine and transcend literary convention and common clichés. With the option to write fiction or non-fiction, and to interpret love and its objects broadly, we will take inspiration from a range of authors including Plato, Ovid, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Thomas Hardy,Toni Morrison, Junot Diaz, and Maggie Nelson. In addition to in-class exercises and discussion, we will workshop your writing during a portion of the day. If you are already working on a story, essay or poem which fits the theme in whole or in part, you are invited to bring 2-8 pages to share. You are also asked to bring a quotation and the titles of one or two works of literature which encapsulate this subject for you.
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. After registering, a yellow Resources tab will appear in this section containing a link to join class. Please note that you will need to be logged into view the Resources tab.
Zoom Participation:
In our experience, the intimate nature of a writing workshop benefits from on-camera participation. Students are of course welcome to turn their camera off whenever they need to, but it is a community norm for cameras to be on most of the time. You can learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
You can enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to access the transcript after class, please make sure to let your instructor ahead of time that you'd like a copy.