ONLINE: Close Reading Workshop: Fiction and Creative Nonfiction

Did you know that fiction and creative nonfiction often use similar elements of narrative design? For writers of fiction and/or creative nonfiction, this class will be part craft discussion, part workshop, part generative space. Each week, we will close-read an essay or short story and articulate the craft elements being used (for example: POV, subject juxtaposition, braided structure, dialogue as story), and then use those elements in our own work. You will write four short works, either essays or short stories, your preference.

Special Notes

• Students will come prepared having read the assigned essay or short story for that week's craft discussion, and will provide written feedback for each other’s workshop pieces. Your written work can be either fiction or creative nonfiction. Students will be provided copies of the essays and short stories that we’ll be reading in advance of class discussion.
• Classes are confirmed one week prior to the start date. In order to help us confirm classes, please register as early as possible.
• This class is held online through Zoom; learn more about how online classes work here

April Sopkin

April Sopkin's work appears in Carve Magazine, Southern Indiana Review, The Southampton Review, failbetter, SAND Journal, and elsewhere. Her work has won the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, the Patricia Aakhus Award, and the Frank McCourt Memoir Prize, and been supported by fellowships and artist residencies from the Tin House Summer Workshop, Norman Mailer Center, Hypatia-in-the-Woods, Jentel, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She received a dual-genre MFA in fiction and nonfiction from Virginia Commonwealth University.

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