Writer's Studio Fall 2022
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.
Date | Description | Facilitator |
---|---|---|
October 10 | Why Say Everything? Considering Ellipsis in Poetry | D.S. Waldman |
October 24 | Haunting Voices | Valerie Kinsey |
October 31 | From the Page to the Stage: Telling Your Story to a Live Audience | Harriett Jernigan |
November 7 | Harness the Power of Poetry | Kath Rothschild |
November 14 | And Then I Woke Up: Dreams in Narrative | Georgina Beaty |
November 28 | Emergency! Writing Vital Drama | Shannon Pufahl |
Why Say Everything? Considering Ellipsis in Poetry
Monday, October 10 with D.S. Waldman
Within poetry—a mode of writing that often prides itself on the concision and precision of language—there exists a wide range of linguistic volume. That is, some poems say more than others, fill in more blanks, provide more specific details to guide the reader through a particular experience of the poem. This workshop focuses on poems that let things go unsaid, leaving more to the reader’s imagination—elliptical poems, we sometimes call them. Together we will discuss elliptical language, how to use it in poems, and to what effect.
D.S. Waldman is a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University. His work has appeared in Kenyon Review, LitHub, Narrative, and other publications. Waldman has received additional support and awards from Middlebury College, Claremont Graduate University and San Diego State University, where he earned his MFA. He serves as poetry editor at Adroit. www.dswaldman.com @ds_waldman
Haunting Voices
Monday, October 24 with Valerie Kinsey
What happens when the dead speak to us? This workshop allows us to give disembodied fictional characters – or real people who once walked the earth – a chance to tell us their side of the story. We’ll consider what unfinished business they might have on earth and what the experience is like on the other side. We’ll focus on voice and dialogue to inspire new stories or creative nonfiction or revise works in progress.
Valerie Kinsey is a Lecturer in Stanford’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric. Her fiction has appeared in Angel City Review, Adelaide, Arcturus and elsewhere; she also writes personal essays, which have been published in Evening Street Press and Streetlight Magazine. She earned her MFA (creative writing) and PhD (English) at the University of New Mexico. In PWR she teaches The Rhetorics of Trauma and The Rhetorics of Monuments and Memorials.
From the Page to the Stage: Telling Your Story to a Live Audience
Monday, October 31 with Harriett Jernigan
We recall twice as much information when we hear it in a story as opposed to a straightforward recitation of facts, because stories connect to the things that matter to us. They work so well that organizations, businesses, and social justice movements have returned in recent years to weaving storytelling into their internal and external practices. So what do stories—especially live ones—activate that a standard presentation doesn’t? And how can we use them to complement our lives? In this workshop, we will explore contemporary live storytelling, taking a deep dive into form, function, and process. We’ll learn about story arc, beginnings and endings, creating narrative gems, and engaging with a live audience. We’ll then apply those lessons by sketching out and practicing part of our stories. Bring what you’ve got on the page–fiction and non-fiction–and put it on the stage.
Harriett Jernigan is a lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric and the coordinator for the Notation in Cultural Rhetorics. A regular performer at The Moth Story Slam and a Grand Slam finalist, she has published fiction, essays, and articles on German language and culture and social geography. Harriett earned her B.A. in creative writing from the University of Alabama and her Ph.D. in German Studies from Stanford University. Currently, she teaches PWR 2: “Speaking Ironic Truth to Power: The Rhetoric of Satirical Protest”. When she’s not working, Harriett’s probably baking or fencing épée.
Harness the Power of Poetry
Monday, November 7 with Kath Rothschild
A single lyric or line from a poem can hold great emotional weight. So why not harness that power for other writing projects? In this workshop, we’ll look at how poetry can be used to evoke emotion and engage readers in nonfiction—such as research papers, journalism, creative nonfiction, and course essays. Using examples of poems and lyrics as frames and touchstones for articles and essays, we’ll practice ways we can connect the short, emotional power punch of poetry with our longer nonfiction forms. Using our favorite poems or our own poetry, we will combine forms and walk away with ideas for new pieces of writing that utilize the emotional strength of poetry in unusual ways.
Kath Rothschild is a Lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University who has an MFA in Fiction Writing and a PhD in Applied Linguistics. Her first-person essays have been published on KQED/NPR, in The San Francisco Chronicle, and in many other Bay Area and California publications. She has received artist’s grants from Vermont Studio Center and Kindling West. Her debut novel for young adults, Wider than the Sky (Soho Teen/PRH, 202) is available everywhere books are sold.
And Then I Woke Up: Dreams in Narrative
Monday, November 14 with Georgina Beaty
Ben Okri issued a call in the Guardian for writers to “confront the climate crisis” with “existential creativity.” He writes “If you knew you were at the last days of the human story what would you write? How would you write?” What does this mean, tangibly: to create a new form and philosophy to grapple with climate change in writing? What about elements of craft? What of humor and subject matter? Are there to be no more stories of first dates? Do we look at the crises head on or at a slant? In this workshop, we’ll look at examples of contemporary climate fiction and distinct approaches to addressing the climate emergency through story. We’ll also work through exercises to tease out and begin to shape our own “new form” to meet these unprecedented times.
Georgina Beaty is the author of the short story collection The Party is Here (Freehand Books, 2021). Her fiction has appeared in New England Review, The Walrus, The New Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, PRISM and elsewhere. As an actor and playwright, she’s worked with theatres across Canada and internationally, most recently with Belarus Free Theatre. She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia and has been supported by fellowships and writing residencies at MacDowell, the Canadian Film Centre and The Banff Centre. She’s currently a Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University.
Emergency! Writing Vital Drama
Monday, November 28 with Shannon Pufahl
The very word “emergency” derives from the phenomenon of emergence, the experience of an object or concept or circumstance becoming suddenly visible. As we know from our recent, contemporary emergencies, dramatic or dangerous events can reveal great forces such as inequality, kindness, community, and anxiety. In fiction, emergencies are often much smaller in scale – a fight with a friend, a death, a divorce – but they, too, reveal and make visible things about character, relationships, and truths. In this workshop, we’ll practice writing scenes of great drama or conflict as a way of surfacing elements of character and theme. In particular, we’ll study setting and physical gesture as techniques that heighten drama and produce feelings of fear or anxiety in readers, in the service of emerging truths.
Shannon Pufahl is a Jones Lecturer in the Creative Writing Program and the author of the novel On Swift Horses. She is a former Stegner Fellow in Fiction. She grew up in rural Kansas. For many years she worked as a freelance music writer and bartender. Her essays, on topics ranging from eighteenth-century America to her childhood, have appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Paris Review, and elsewhere.