Short Story Writing: Hearing Voices

(EGL 123)

In this course, we’ll examine and experiment with a wide range of storytelling personas and points of view, from the unreliable first-person narrator to the judicial distance of the magisterial voice. We will discuss the relative merits and challenges of each approach and look at work that breaks the “rules,” successfully and shamelessly mixing storytelling methods. Frequent writing exercises will ask students to try out a variety of voices and points of view for themselves, possibly generating longer pieces. Readings will include fiction by Lorrie Moore, Jose Saramago, Breece D’J Pancake, James Alan McPherson, and others. Weekly workshops will involve group critique of student work, with emphasis on further fundamentals of fiction writing (such as character, description, and narrative structure), and also with close attention to language and revision.

Stephanie Soileau, Nancy Packer Lecturer in Continuing Studies; Former Stegner Fellow

Stephanie Soileau’s short stories have appeared in Tin House, Gulf Coast, StoryQuarterly, Nimrod International Journal, New Stories from the South, and Best of the South, Volume II: From 10 Years of New Stories from the South. She is working on a collection of stories and a novel about fishing, oil, and erosion in coastal Louisiana.