Writing Workshops

Closer to the Truth: Translating Memory Into Fiction with Debra Jo Immergut (Sold Out)

$495

8 Sessions

Out of stock

Once a week Tuesdays, 6:00 pm EDT - 8:00 pm EDT April 5 to May 24, 2022

Online via Zoom

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This workshop has reached its capacity. To join the waitlist, please email Randy Winston at [email protected].

Fiction is an extraordinary machine for distilling deeply personal experience into art. In this generative workshop, participants will examine how writers of stories and novels can most effectively harness that machine’s power.

Keeping in mind Joan Didion’s observations about the differences between truth and fact—“How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth”—we will explore ways to mine our lives for powerful raw material while avoiding overexposure. We’ll consider when it’s best to hew close to “real life” and when it’s better to recast, reshape, or simply lie about everything for greater narrative drive and resonance.

Each meeting will focus on a different element of story construction, providing a theme for readings from current and classic fiction and for in-class writing sessions. Participants will also read each other’s work, and respond with insight and compassion. The course’s underlying lesson is this: every life can yield ample and gorgeous material for works of fiction.

Capacity: 12

Led by

Debra Jo Immergut

Debra Jo Immergut

Debra Jo Immergut is the author of You Again (Ecco/HarperCollins), a New York Times Best of 2020 and a finalist for the 2021 Gotham Book Prize. Her 2018 novel The Captives (Ecco/HarperCollins) was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Debut Novel and published in over a dozen countries worldwide. She has also published a collection of short fiction, Private Property (Random House). Her essays and stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, Narrative, the New York Times, PANK, and Hobart, among others. She is a recipient of Michener and MacDowell fellowships and was nominated for the 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize. She has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

By Debra Jo Immergut

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You Again

By Debra Jo Immergut

Published by HarperCollins

PURCHASE

Abigail Willard first spots her from the back of a New York cab: the spitting image of Abby herself at age twenty-two—right down to the silver platforms and raspberry coat she wore as a young artist with a taste for wildness. But the real Abby is now forty-six and married, with a corporate job and two kids. As the girl vanishes into a rainy night, Abby is left shaken. Was this merely a hallucinatory side effect of working-mom stress? A message of sorts, sent to remind her of passions and dreams tossed aside? Or something more explosive and life-altering?

As weeks go by, Abby continues to spot her double around her old New York haunts—and soon, despite her better instincts, Abby finds herself tailing her look-alike. She is dogged by a nagging suspicion that there is a deeper mystery to figure out, one rooted far in her past. All the while, Abby’s life starts to slip from her control: her marriage hits major turbulence, her teenage son drifts into a radical movement that portends a dark coming era. When her elusive double presents her with a dangerous proposition, Abby must decide how much she values the life she’s built, and how deeply she knows herself.

You Again is an audaciously constructed novel, an unboxing of memory, desire, and regret—and an electrifying portrait of a woman hurtling toward a key crossroads in her life, where a secret lies buried like an undetonated bomb.

About this series

Writing Workshops

We strive to make our classes the most inviting and rewarding available, offering an intimate environment to study with award-winning, world-class writers. Each class is specially designed by the instructor, so whether you’re a fledgling writer or an MFA graduate polishing your novel, you’ll find a perfect fit here.

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