Class Description
Thinking about getting an MFA? Feeling ready to publish? In this intensive forum, you will polish and/or complete at least two short works of fiction. The emphasis is on building and applying elements of craft such as narrative point of view, story arc, dialogue, specificity of language, openings, and good sentence-making. The class will consist primarily of extensive peer workshop along with short lectures and close examination of published short fiction chosen, to the extent possible, to speak to the specific craft issues raised in students' work, and/or to illustrate some novel approach to an element of craft. Authors discussed in class will range from older masters such as Chekhov, Katherine Mansfield, James Baldwin, William Trevor, and Alice Munro to newer voices such as Claire Vaye Watkins, Lauren Groff, Tea Obreht, and Nam Le.
The course will be open to students working on short fiction and flash fiction; novel chapters will be discouraged. You will be in the company of other serious writers and an experienced instructor dedicated to giving comprehensive and insightful feedback. Only students who have taken previous fiction workshops at GrubStreet or elsewhere should apply. Space is limited to 9 students in order to foster a closer, more intense and more rigorous learning experience.
To apply, please click the red "SEE DIRECTIONS TO APPLY" button in the top right corner of this page. This application will ask you to detail your workshop experience. It will also ask you to upload a 5-10 page writing sample. Please make sure this writing sample is in Microsoft Word, double-spaced, and in 12-point font. For tracking purposes, your name should appear in the file name (e.g. Smith.Story Title.Submission). Decisions will be emailed to applicants approx. 1-2 weeks after the deadline. You can also track the status of your application in your Grubstreet profile. Please make sure your application is complete before you finally click "APPLY." If you have any technical difficulties filling out this application, please email [email protected]. You will receive a confirmation email once our system has received your submission.
Important dates:
The application deadline for this class is March 9th at 11:59pm. Applicants can expect to learn of decisions 1-2 weeks after the deadline.
Did you know that we have scholarships available for all GrubStreet classes? To apply, click the "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button in the top right corner of this page. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your scholarship application and await our Scholarship Committee's decision before registering for the class. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively. For "Master" classes, please submit both the class application and the scholarship application before the deadline stated above.
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.