This is an in-person workshop that takes place at Inprint House.
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”
— Shirley Jackson
“Genre is a bookstore problem, not a literary problem.”
— Rick Moody
There is a longstanding myth that “good” writing and “escapist” writing (AKA genre fiction) are mutually exclusive terms. In this workshop, we’ll turn that myth on its head, and investigate what we can learn from, and do with, genres that defy the rules of reality. We’ll look at short stories and novel excerpts from the worlds of sci-fi, magical realism, dystopia, and historical fiction, and discuss how these writers mesh traditional narrative tools (character, motif, point-of-view, Artistotelian plot) with fantastical world building to create stories that are a pleasure to escape into. Then we’ll put these findings into practice with generative, in-class exercises to help you begin drafting your own reality-defying, genre-bending stories. The second half of the course will be devoted to in-depth workshops of your pieces–short stories, novel chapters, novellas, all forms are welcome!
About the instructor
IRIS CRONIN is a fiction writer, playwright, translator, teacher, and native Houstonian. She is entering her third and final year of the fiction MFA at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, where she is the recipient of both the Sustaining the Writing Life Fellowship and the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Scholarship for the Interdisciplinary Arts. Her literature degree contains a subspecialty in literary translation between French and English, and her senior translation thesis, a play by an acclaimed Quebecoise playwright, was staged by Montreal’s renowned Talisman Theater Company in December 2021. She has taught English, French, and creative writing in many venues, including the Brown Francophone Studies Department, the Young Writer’s Workshop at the University of Virginia, the AWTY International School, and the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.
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