Writer's Studio Fall 2019
Come study the art of writing in intensive, fun, hands-on workshops with dynamic instructors from Stanford’s writing, literature, and arts programs. Each week focuses on a specific craft element or process, with opportunity to experiment and practice. You’ll leave with an expanded understanding of what your writing can do. Designed for students but open to the whole Stanford community, the workshops are held most Mondays from 6:00-7:30pm when classes are in session at Stanford. Unless otherwise noted, workshops are at the Hume Center, Room 201. See each quarter’s schedule below for details. The full archive of Writer's Studio Workshops is coming soon to this site.
Session Date | Description | Facilitator |
---|---|---|
Monday, Oct 14 | Flash Fiction and the Freedom of Story | Edward Porter |
Monday, Oct 21 | Collaboration and Imagination: Writers Inspiring Writers | John Peterson |
Monday, Oct 28 | Two Households, Both Unalike in Dignity: Writing about Class and Race | Jenn Alandy Trahan |
Monday, Nov 4 | Who's Talking Here? | Nina Schloesser Tarano |
Monday, Nov 11 | Collaborative Story Games | Dan Klein |
Monday, Nov 18 | Songwriting and Lyrics | Kai Carlson-Wee |
Flash Fiction and the Freedom of Story
Monday, October 14 12 with Edward Porter
In this workshop, you’ll write complete pieces of fiction in two hundred words or less, working from a variety of examples and prompts. Extreme brevity may look like a constraint, but it can free the writer to take chances and make leaps of faith. Make icebergs speak! Tell the history of a marriage in a sip of coffee. It’s speed dating with your imagination!
Edward Porter’s short fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, The Hudson Review, The Gettysburg Review, Colorado Review, Best New American Voices, and elsewhere. A former Stegner Fellow, he is currently a Jones Lecturer in creative writing at Stanford University.
Collaboration and Imagination: Writers Inspiring Writers
Monday, October 21 with John Peterson
This workshop offers a chance to experience the benefits of working with other writers, whether just at the start or throughout the process of creating a story. We’ll explore how collaboration helps take ego out of the process, focus on the “thing” we are creating, and forget, a little, how that thing is a part of us. We will also work with a variety of modes of expression—stories, essays, poems, drawings, songs—to see how working in different modes can open up new possibilities for our work. We will experiment with Google Docs, try speed writing, practice meditation, tell as many jokes as possible, and get some writing “things” started–or finished! Wear comfortable clothing and please bring your laptops. Feel free to bring musical instruments.
John Peterson is an Advanced Lecturer in Stanford’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric. He is researching the relationships between collaboration, improvisation, and electronic sharing in environments such as Google Docs and social media for his book project, Free Speech and Improvisation: The Danger and Beauty of Speaking Off the Cuff. He received his MFA in fiction from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
Two Households, Both Unalike in Dignity: Writing about Class and Race
Monday, October 28 with Jenn Alandy Trahan
Gatsby and Daisy in Louisville, Lady Chatterley and Oliver in Wragby, Sammy and Queenie in the A&P. What is it about class-created chasms that make character motivation so compelling? Should writers speak to class and race in their narratives? How do we weave in these details? We will read selected snippets by contemporary fiction writers, including Dorothy Allison, Alexia Arthurs, Jamel Brinkley, Junot Diaz, and Callan Wink, and then we will generate exposition, craft our own scenes, and discuss how to bring our characters and their stories to life.
Jenn Alandy Trahan was a 2016-2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction and currently teaches here at Stanford. Her work can be found in Permafrost, Blue Mesa Review, Harper’s, and The Best American Short Stories 2019. She currently lives in Silicon Valley, where she can’t help but think about class and race more than she typically would.
Who's Talking Here?
Monday, November 4 with Tiffany Naiman
Have you ever read a passage of fiction and felt like there was something wrong, but been unable to figure out what it was? Chances are, narrative distance had something to do with it. Come learn about this recondite technical aspect of fiction, which is also, line by line, the way the reader answers the question “Who’s talking here?”
Nina Schloesser Tárano was born and grew up in Guatemala. She has an M.F.A. from Columbia University and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, where she’s now a lecturer in the Creative Writing Program. She lives in San Francisco with her wife, sister, two sons, and three dogs.
Collaborative Story Games
Monday, November 11 with Christy Hartman
Making up stories with your friends is a profoundly human endeavor. Over the past 50+ years, improvisational theater has been exploring ways to practice and perform engaging narratives. Come learn skills you can apply to any kind of storytelling you are doing right now, from memoir and fiction to film and performance. This is an invitation to come play and to see what happens next!
Dan Klein is a Lecturer in the TAPS department and a Lecturer of Management at the GSB. He leads workshops all over the world, and is the former Dean of the School at BATS Improv in SF.
Songwriting and Lyrics
Monday, November 18 with Kai Carlson-Wee
What makes for good lyrics? What is the difference between a poem and a song? How do we translate our language into music, our feelings into lyrical form? In this Writer’s Studio we will be listening to songs, looking at the musical structure of language, and working to write our own lyrical pieces. All levels of experience are welcome!
Kai Carlson-Wee is the author of Rail (BOA Editions, 2018). His photography has been featured in Narrative Magazine, and his poetry film, Riding the Highline, has screened at film festivals across the country. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow, he lives in San Francisco and is a lecturer at Stanford University.