Workshop: Fiction
Registration is now closed.
Reading Like a Writer
The best way to become a smarter, stronger, writer, is to read and read and read. But reading as a writer is not the same as reading as a reader. It involves re-reading, first and always. It involves defining and understanding the different component parts of a story or a novel, of a sentence or a paragraph, taking them apart and then considering how the writer put them all together; it involves stealing, giving language to the choices you now see the writer making, defining for yourself their impacts, and figuring out how to make these same choices yourself. This class is great for anyone wanting to be a writer but also if you're only writing-curious. It's meant to help you feel more aware of, offer a clearer understanding of whatever it is you read, to understand all those mushy complicated feelings as enacted on you by a group of formal choices that the writer made, choices you yourself might also make.
The class will include one assigned short story for each class which you will read (at least) twice in preparation, as well as lots of in-class writing exercises. There will be an opportunity to workshop one piece of writing of your own at the end of the class for those who are (or become) interested.
SUBMIT
After registering, each participant in the fiction workshop is asked to submit one story/excerpt in advance. The piece should be double-spaced and no more than 1,000 words.
Please send your submission by 9:00 a.m. on February 23. Please email the manuscripts as attachments to director@mainewriters.org with the subject line: “FICTION SNOWBOUND MSS.” *Word files are preferred, but you may also send a PDF.
Lynn Steger Strong is the author of the novels Hold Still, Want, and, most recently, Flight. She had a recurring column in The Guardian's “Two in Five” on the disappearing American middle class and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Time, Harper’s Bazaar, Los Angeles Times, The Paris Review, The Cut, New York Magazine, and elsewhere. She has taught writing at The Pratt Institute, Fairfield University, Catapult, and Columbia University and is the Visiting Fiction Writer at Bates College for the 2022-2023 school year. She was born and raised in South Florida.