Class Description
Writing from or about a place of ruralness requires an attention to landscape and a sensitivity towards character that is different from writing about urban environments. When stories are located in towns with tiny populations and names few people have heard of, the identities of characters can feel inextricable from their communities. And with so many misunderstandings about rural communities—including what it even means to be rural—it can be daunting to try to accurately render a rural setting. This can get even trickier when characters don’t fit the stereotype of what it means to be rural, for example queer rural characters, or come from rural communities that exist outside of rural stereotypes, like Black and Indigenous rural communities.
In this 6-week fiction workshop, we will read and write all kinds of rural stories. That includes stories set on the ranch or farm, but also the woods, mountains, island or remote coast, the desert, the jungle, the tiny village, the oil field, the reservation. Our definition of rural will be expansive and include rural perspectives from beyond the United States. Writers we will read include Morgan Talty, Madeliene Fitch, Juan Rulfo, Can Xue, Claire Keegan, and Alice Walker. Each week, we’ll receive optional prompts to help us sharpen our sense of writing about setting and place and create complex rural characters. Each writer in the class will have the chance to be workshopped 1-2 times over the course of the 6 weeks, and this class will include providing feedback on each other’s work outside of class time. This class welcomes writers from rural communities looking to build online community, as well as folks living anywhere who are looking to hone stories set in rural places.
Writing Roadmap: We've created a simple, goal-based writing roadmap to help you find the perfect GrubStreet course for your writing needs.
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.