Intensive Fiction Workshop with Taymour Soomro

In this workshop, we will close read and critique each other’s fiction. We will use each other’s writing as opportunities to discuss and explore questions of fiction craft such as structure, characterization, and voice. We will study how to read as writers, how to read for craft, and how to talk and think about fiction in a way that supports our craft. The challenges with fiction are never only technical. Often, the greater challenges are psychological. We’ll explore such questions as “what is the story I want to tell,” “what is getting in the way of me telling this story,” “why am I struggling to finish work,” and “why am I struggling to commit.” The workshop will also include an opportunity to discuss the writing life and the publishing industry.

In advance of the workshop, participants will share samples of their own creative writing of up to 5,000 words (a short story or a chapter of a novel, for example) and read each other’s work. This workshop will suit writers of a range of abilities, from beginners to advanced writers but of course depends upon writers already being engaged in a writing project, even if that is a very short project.

Class size: minimum 5; maximum 12.

Member discount: Members of Write On receive a 10% discount on all classes and workshops. To become a member, please click here. To receive the discount, members must log in to the website using their unique password and enter member10 in the promotion code box. The code is case sensitive.

Teaching artist: Taymour Soomro is the author of the novel Other Names for Love and the co-editor of the essay collection Letters to a Writer of Color. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and elsewhere. He read law at Cambridge University and Stanford Law School and has a PhD in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. He has received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Sozopol Fiction Seminars, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. He teaches at the Bennington Writing Seminars.