Class Description
Here’s something we’ve noticed: taking a bunch of workshops, and learning and practicing the craft of fiction, doesn’t always make you any better at coming up with story ideas. In fact, often, the more we write, the more we limit ourselves to the same types of narratives that cover similar territory. This writing-intensive and student-centered course features unique weekly prompts designed for advanced and intermediate students who want to stretch different creative muscles, who want to “play” with other students at their level, and who want to potentially generate new stories with identity, culture, or social contexts in mind. Expect to encounter and produce work that blurs genres, that is inspired by non-Western traditions and non-canonical modes of storytelling, that are content-based as well as form-based. Accepted students will fill out a brief survey for the instructor, who will design a series of prompts and readings that both push you out of your reliable patterns and/or show you new ways of working within them. You will write and submit one short piece each week and develop at least one of them into a longer story. Feedback will be a combination of peer and instructor review and will be co-led by the writer, who will be an active participant in their own critique and strategies for revision.
NOTE: In addition to our regular evals, we will be sending out a short survey to students at the end of the course so we can obtain feedback on how this new workshop structure went. As a way to thank you for your participation, we’ve discounted the class price 10%!
Important dates:
Applications are now closed. The payment deadline for admitted students is Monday, October 1st, 2018.
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.