FICT 118 — Fiction Club: A Guided Writing Group
Quarter: Fall
Instructor(s): Malena Watrous
Date(s): Sep 28—Nov 30
Class Recording Available: No
Class Meeting Day: Mondays
Class Meeting Time: 5:30—8:00 pm (PT)
Please Note: No class on November 23
Tuition: $950
Refund Deadline: Sep 30
Unit(s): 2
Enrollment Limit: 18
Status: Registration opens Aug 17, 8:30 am (PT)
Quarter: Fall
Day: Mondays
Duration: 9 weeks
Time: 5:30—8:00 pm (PT)
Date(s): Sep 28—Nov 30
Unit(s): 2
Tuition: $950
Refund Deadline: Sep 30
Instructor(s): Malena Watrous
Enrollment Limit: 18
Recording Available: No
Status: Registration opens Aug 17, 8:30 am (PT)
Please Note: No class on November 23
Writing groups are essential to most writers, providing structure, deadlines, and thoughtful feedback. Fiction Club brings together short story writers and novelists to trade pages and engage in lively literary conversation in a supportive, generative setting.
Each session begins with a discussion of a published story or novel excerpt, followed by a craft talk and an in-class exercise. We’ll then workshop student submissions (stories or chapters), focusing on what’s working well before addressing opportunities for revision. To preserve your writing time, you won’t be required to provide formal written critiques; just come prepared to discuss one another’s work thoughtfully, having read it closely. The instructor will provide written comments on each submission. This is a space for fiction lovers to come together and read deeply, write bravely, and geek out about the choices that make invented worlds and characters come alive. Together, we’ll take risks, make breakthroughs, and move our work forward.
Each session begins with a discussion of a published story or novel excerpt, followed by a craft talk and an in-class exercise. We’ll then workshop student submissions (stories or chapters), focusing on what’s working well before addressing opportunities for revision. To preserve your writing time, you won’t be required to provide formal written critiques; just come prepared to discuss one another’s work thoughtfully, having read it closely. The instructor will provide written comments on each submission. This is a space for fiction lovers to come together and read deeply, write bravely, and geek out about the choices that make invented worlds and characters come alive. Together, we’ll take risks, make breakthroughs, and move our work forward.
This is the first course in our Fiction Club series, which features a different instructor each quarter. The second course will be offered in Winter 2027, and the third in Spring 2027. Completing each course guarantees priority registration in the following quarter. Each course can be taken independently as well.
MALENA WATROUS
Writing Certificate Lead and Creative Writing Coordinator, Stanford Continuing Studies
Malena Watrous is the author of the novel If You Follow Me and co-author of the novel Sparked and the cookbooks My Mexico City Kitchen and Scandinavian from Scratch. She has contributed to The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. Watrous was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. Textbooks for this course:
(Required) Michelle Huneven, Bug Hollow (ISBN 0593834879)
(Required) Deborah Treisman, Ed., A Century of Fiction in The New Yorker: 1925–2025 (ISBN 0593801911)
(Required) Deborah Treisman, Ed., A Century of Fiction in The New Yorker: 1925–2025 (ISBN 0593801911)