NVL 77 — Young Adult Novel Workshop: Capturing the YA Voice
Quarter: Summer
Instructor(s): Laurel Flores Fantauzzo
Date(s): Jun 26—Aug 28
Class Recording Available: Yes
Class Meeting Day: Wednesdays
Class Meeting Time: 6:30—9:20 pm (PT)
Tuition: $745
Refund Deadline: Jun 28
Unit(s): 3
Enrollment Limit: 21
Status: Closed
Quarter: Summer
Day: Wednesdays
Duration: 10 weeks
Time: 6:30—9:20 pm (PT)
Date(s): Jun 26—Aug 28
Unit(s): 3
Tuition: $745
Refund Deadline: Jun 28
Instructor(s): Laurel Flores Fantauzzo
Enrollment Limit: 21
Recording Available: Yes
Status: Closed
In young adult novels, the narrator's voice acts as a compass, guiding readers through the maze of coming-of-age conflicts and helping them navigate new worlds. This workshop will offer weekly generative sessions designed to help you discover, craft, and hone the voice of a compelling YA protagonist. For inspiration, we will read short excerpts from established practitioners in the genre, including Randy Ribay, Elizabeth Acevedo, John Knowles, and Aiden Thomas. Students will then engage their own emotional memories, ideas, and imaginations to establish the main characters of new, original YA novels and channel their unique voices.
Writing exercises will engage methods of internal and external conflict, teach how to establish a character’s relationship to their physical settings and eras, explore what makes for unique and compelling dialogue, instruct in how to build plot, and more. Students will write approximately 5,000 words of new material for in-class feedback from the instructor and small groups of students. This course will provide a supportive, noncompetitive environment in which to create fiction and generate a firm foundation from which to continue writing beyond the class.
Writing exercises will engage methods of internal and external conflict, teach how to establish a character’s relationship to their physical settings and eras, explore what makes for unique and compelling dialogue, instruct in how to build plot, and more. Students will write approximately 5,000 words of new material for in-class feedback from the instructor and small groups of students. This course will provide a supportive, noncompetitive environment in which to create fiction and generate a firm foundation from which to continue writing beyond the class.
LAUREL FLORES FANTAUZZO
Author
Laurel Flores Fantauzzo is the author of the young adult novel My Heart Underwater and the nonfiction narrative The First Impulse. Her essays have appeared on CNN Philippines and in The New York Times, The Baffler, and elsewhere. She has been named a Philippine National Book Award finalist, a PEN/FUSION Emerging Writers Prize finalist, and a grantee of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice. She has taught writing and literature at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Yale-NUS College in Singapore, and Ateneo de Manila University. Textbooks for this course:
There are no required textbooks; however, some fee-based online readings may be assigned.