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.
The deadline for this class has passed. Applicants will hear back the week of December 8th.
To learn more about instructor Chip Cheek and his teaching style, check out the short podcast with him in our GrubStreet Instructor Interview series:
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.