Narrative Magic: A Fiction Workshop
Imagine taking your pencil and throwing it against a window. Now imagine that same pencil growing wings made of feathers, shattering the window, and flying off. What in the world will happen next? Instilling a bit of magical or fabulist realism into fiction gives a writer a wide canvas to create a telling reality in stories about the world we inhabit now. Using prompts, short selected readings, and writing exercises on ironic distance, metaphor, and humor, this four-week fiction workshop explores how writers can infuse magical realism into their work. Authors we might read include Julio Cortazar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Angela Carter, Laura Esquivel, Franz Kafka, and Nikolai Gogol.
BIOGRAPHY
Indira Ganesan has written three novels, The Journey (1990), Inheritance (1998), and As Sweet as Honey (2013). She is a former fellow of the Radcliffe Bunting Institute, The MacDowell Colony, and the Fine Arts Work Center. In Provincetown, she hosts a global music show on Sunday mornings at WOMR-FM, reviews books for Phi Beta Kappa’s thekeyreporter.org, and is working on a new book. She has taught at the University of Missouri, UC San Diego, UC Santa Cruz, Southampton College, Naropa University, CU Boulder, and Emerson College.
