Concision
Date & Time
Mondays, 7-9 p.m.
Sept. 12 - Oct. 17
Class Size
6 Students
Mondays, 7-9 p.m.
Sept. 12 - Oct. 17
6 Students
Most books contain too many words. This class aims to eliminate all redundancy, pleonasm, and throat-clearing. We’ll withhold words, tighten phrases, curtail sentences, condense scenes, abridge plots, and maybe kill some characters. Our insignia will be a greyhound holding a scalpel and chainsaw while standing on a Delete key. This class’s instructor recently edited his 900-page novel down to 380.
During this six-week intensive workshop, each student will workshop twice. Students will also meet with the instructor for individual conferences.
Tony Tulathimutte’s novel Private Citizens was called “the first great millennial novel” by New York Magazine. A graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has written for The New York Times, VICE, WIRED, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, N+1, Playboy, The Paris Review, and many others. He has received a 2017 Whiting Award, an O. Henry Award, and a MacDowell Fellowship, and appeared as a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
"Tulathimutte’s accomplished, witty, often hilarious debut transforms the Bay Area into a Balzacian microcosm that seems to contain every germ of contemporary American life and youth."
"Tony Tulathimutte’s brilliant debut novel is hilarious and heartbreaking all at once—a spot-on, satirical portrait of modern San Francisco and the privilege that inhabits it."
"Tony Tulathimutte is a virtuoso of words… [his] writing edifies and entertains in language that’s highbrow yet unwholesome-gourmet junk food, like the cereal-milk-flavored soft-serve at Momofuku Milk Bar."
"Tony’s course was one of my favorites from college. He consistently led engaging and mind-opening discussions, and I genuinely looked forward to completing his homework assignments, which consisted of intriguing readings and fun, challenging writing prompts. Not only did my reading and writing improve, but I also became better at critical thinking. Tony puts a lot of work into the classes he teaches."
"PRIVATE CITIZENS is the product of a whirring intellect with brilliance to burn. It examines the anxieties and privileges of the Millennial Generation as well as any book I’ve come across. Reading Tony Tulathimutte is like watching a mad genius at work in his laboratory, conjuring the magnificent and the monstrous into life."
"PRIVATE CITIZENS is a freak of literature—a novel so authentic, hilarious, elegantly plotted, and heartbreaking that I’d follow it anywhere. Tony Tulathimutte is a singular intellect with an uncanny 40/20 vision on the world."
"Witty, unsparing, and unsettlingly precise, Tulathimutte empathizes with his subjects even as he (brilliantly) skewers them. A satirical portrait of privilege and disappointment with striking emotional depth."
