Courses

Writing a good short story involves a steady hand with suspense, close attention to language, a near-obsessive grasp of detail, and an underlying yet palpable sense of direction. All characters want things—love, sex, money, Cheez-Its—and a particular character’s search for that thing, those things, forms the basis of plot. During this short fiction course, we will discuss how it is that particular stories, both our own and published works, either fulfill or evade standard conventions of plot. We will also practice a process useful to fiction composition: reading, analyzing, and mining others' writing for new insights that we can apply to our work. Think of the course as a laboratory designed to encourage your own creative production. Students will write one story of approximately five to 10 pages and another of a “fuller” length that we will workshop as a class. Along the way, we will study works by Aimee Bender, Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Díaz, George Saunders, and others. By the end, you will know how to tell a story in a riveting, stylish, singular manner.