6-Week Fiction Workshop: Making the Story Extraordinary
Date & Time
Tuesdays, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Nov. 14 - Dec. 19
Class Size
6 Students
Tuesdays, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Nov. 14 - Dec. 19
6 Students
In this workshop, we will approach the writing of our peers with a serious editorial eye, aiming to produce writing ready to be published. We will utilize the classic workshop method of investigating what the writer is trying to achieve with their piece and engaging our own experience with the craft to contribute to their goal. But as we perfect craft, larger ideas will not be abandoned – we will also actively think about what makes certain fiction exceptional, and what unexplored leaps we can take in our own writing to push the boundaries of what we know as literature.
CLASS TAKEAWAYS
-intensive peer and instructor feedback on two fiction submissions
-greater familiarity with contemporary literature
-one personal conference with the instructor to discuss your writing style, goals, and areas for improvement
-access to a nurturing community of writers and readers and to your mentor/instructor
-the skills and motivation to think boldly about narrative possibilities, and to push boundaries on the page
-more confidence as a writer, on and off the page
Jaroslav Kalfař was born one year before the Velvet Revolution in Prague, Czech Republic. He immigrated to the United States at the age of fifteen. He has earned an MFA from New York University, where he was a Goldwater Fellow and a nominee for the inaugural E.L. Doctorow Prize. His debut novel, Spaceman of Bohemia, is out from Little, Brown in the U.S., and is being translated into nine languages.
"SPACEMAN OF BOHEMIA gets heavy—but the story, like its protagonist, flies along weightlessly. A book like this lives and dies on the strength of its first-person voice, and in that regard, Kalfar triumphs. Jakub may be self-absorbed, but he's also charming, funny, and endearingly sympathetic...{the novel} turns the lonely-spaceman cliché on its head; Jakub isn't driven to madness by his tenure in space, exactly, but toward a lucid state of super-sanity, with all the pain and poignancy that comes with it."
"...wonderfully jubilant and touching debut novel. Written in an erudite comic style, the novel boldly switches tones like a spacesuit built for multiple planetary atmospheres: from the historical to the domestic, from out-of-this-world fables to brutal terrestrial reality."
“Kalfar has much larger aims with SPACEMAN OF BOHEMIA than to write a spry, madcap work of speculative fiction . . . He has such a lively mind and so many ideas to explore . . . Kalfar has an exhilarating flair for imagery. He writes boisterously and mordantly . . . His voice is distinct enough to leave tread marks . . . A frenetically imaginative first effort, booming with vitality and originality.”
