Fiction | Workshop

6-Week Advanced Fiction Workshop

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This advanced fiction workshop led by Tracy O’Neill (author of The Hopeful, National Book Award 5 under 35 honoree, and editor-in-chief of Epiphany Magazine) is for writers of fiction who have previous workshop experience and are hoping to hone their literary fiction to a submission-ready level. Admission is competitive, and will be granted on a rolling basis. Novel excerpts and short stories are welcome.

In class, we will focus on heightening our awareness of the choices we make on the page, discussing how to complicate characters, establish tension, structure plot elements, modulate sentence rhythm, shift point of view, elaborate a world, and finesse beginnings and endings. While this is primarily a workshop, we will read published works as well as the stories of our peers, creating an informative, engaging conversation that bridges the space between the two. Each writer will have the opportunity to submit for peer and instructor feedback twice throughout the six-week period. All students will meet once with the instructor for an individual conference following their in-class critiques.

During this six-week intensive workshop, each student will workshop twice. Students will also meet with the instructor for individual conferences.

Students in this class will be invited to a private summer reception with leading literary agents. 

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

- produce submission-level fiction

- peer and instructor feedback on two fiction submissions

- one individual meeting with the instructor to discuss work submitted, goals for the future, and areas for improvement

- a greater understanding of how to create fictional worlds

Tracy O'Neill

Tracy O'Neill is the author of The Hopeful (2015) and Quotients (2020). She was a 2015 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and a 2012 Center for Fiction Fellow. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, the New Yorker, LitHub, BOMB, Narrative, Guernica, Bookforum, Vice, VQR, Austin Chronicle, and Catapult. She attended the MFA program at the City College of New York and the PhD program in communications at Columbia University. 

Testimonials

"I appreciated the risks the Tracy made us take with writing exercises."

former student

"In her hypnotic debut, Tracy O'Neill has created an indelible character in Alivopro Doyle, a young woman trapped in an anguished tangle of identity and fierce ambition. Though Doyle fights to keep us at arm's length with crackling comebacks, we can't help but notice, and want to protect, her tender brokenness as she struggles to break free from a body that has failed her."

Karolina Waclawiak author of HOW TO GET INTO THE TWIN PALMS

"The book soars in its descriptions of figure skating, capturing its strange and brutal beauty and achieving a beauty of its own in the process."

Kirkus Reviews

"The Hopeful is a fine debut, smartly exploring the costs of obsession and trauma, the wages of daring to chase your boldest dreams. Tracy O’Neill’s gift for precise and surprising detail reveals her page after page to be a smart and compelling storyteller, whose gripping first novel is sure to thrill readers."

Matt Bell author of IN THE HOUSE UPON THE DIRT BETWEEN THE LAKE AND THE WOODS

"I appreciated the quality and diversity of texts, the interesting writing prompts, and the intelligence, involvement, and relatability of the professor. Tracy was great."

former student