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  • Workshop
  • Online: Zoom
  • Intermediate
  • 1 Week

Short Fiction Intensive

No Longer Enrolling

  • $310.00 Non-Member
  • $295.00 Member

Class Description

In this one-week intensive class, we will discuss and practice the various ways that interiority can be made moving and central to our stories and novels-in-progress. We will ask and begin to answer the following questions: How can we represent our characters' interiorities? To what extent can we suggest depth through dialogue, gesture, and description? How can we create a sense both of depth and urgency? How can the thoughts, feelings and motivations of our characters become compelling landscapes in and of themselves? And how can we describe them with sensitivity, sonorousness and intimacy?


In the first half of the course, we will read excerpts from novels and short stories by writers such as Alice Munro, James Baldwin, Elena Ferrante, Virginia Woolf, and Toni Morrison. We will examine the ways feeling and interiority can serve as the central engine of narrative, as well as how to move skillfully between interior and exterior worlds. We will also use these conversations as starting off points to generate new material, to play around with different modes of interiority in our work.


In the second half of the course, we will workshop our works-in-progress with a particular eye to deepening our characters' interior lives. These 10-15 page (double-spaced) excerpts will be due on the 1st Monday of class in order to give all students a chance to read them in advance of the Thursday/Friday workshops.


This course is fit for anyone at the intermediate or advanced levels who feels their work could do with an infusion of depth and complexity, and to anyone who has taken my one-day Interior Landscapes Course and would like to explore this topic in more depth.

Scholarship Information

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 more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.

Scholarships Format/Location

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.