About the Workshop

No writing craft can matter if, at the end of the day, the reader doesn’t care. In this generative fiction workshop, we’ll write new material every day, focusing on establishing emotional stakes in the narratives. We will read and study excerpts of texts that elicit responses in readers, discussing the craft techniques that provoke strong emotion. We will discuss further techniques to elicit emotional responses and practice them through daily writing prompts. Participants can choose to generate new work, or to use the workshop to revise material for a project in progress.

Students should bring a writing utensil and paper to class each day.

About the Instructor

Lydi Conklin has received a Stegner Fellowship, four Pushcart Prizes, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a Fulbright, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross, Emory, Hedgebrook, Djerassi, and elsewhere. Their fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, One Story, McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, and VQR. They are an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University. Their story collection, Rainbow Rainbow, was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award and The Story Prize. Their novel, Songs of No Provenance, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.