This is an in-person workshop that takes place at Inprint House.
If this workshop is full when you try to register, please sign up on the waiting list here so you receive priority registration the next time this class is offered.
Location, Location, Location: Writing Place in Prose
Writer Rebecca Makkai has called setting “the most underutilized tool in fiction.” While we often think of setting as simply the time and place of a story, the where of a narrative can do far more than just establish scenery. It can shape mood and atmosphere, heighten conflict, and influence the lives of characters.
In this workshop, participants will explore setting as an essential element of storytelling through craft discussions, close readings, and in-class writing exercises. We’ll read stories and excerpts by writers like John Steinbeck, Sarah Thankam Mathews, Toni Morrison, Arundhati Roy, and others, identifying techniques for creating vivid, meaningful settings while becoming better acquainted with the places our own writing inhabits. Each participant will have the opportunity to submit a piece of fiction or creative nonfiction for workshop discussion.
Anna Story is a writer from Illinois living in Texas. Her work has received support from Inprint and the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Houston, where she received an Inprint Brown Foundation Fellowship and served as fiction editor for Gulf Coast Journal. She is currently at work on a collection of stories concerned with girlhood, class, desire, and the Midwest.
