Writing Workshops

"Crash" Writing: A Two-Day Generative Fiction Workshop with Zeynep Özakat (November 2024)

$150

2 Sessions

Out of stock

Saturday & Sunday 12:00 pm EDT - 3:00 pm EDT November 9 to November 10, 2024

Online via Zoom

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Kazuo Ishiguro famously wrote his Booker Prize-winning novel The Remains of the Day in four weeks, explaining in an essay, “I would, for a four-week period, ruthlessly clear my diary and go on what [my wife and I] somewhat mysteriously called a ‘Crash.’ During the Crash, I would do nothing but write from 9am to 10:30pm, Monday through Saturday. I’d get one hour off for lunch and two for dinner.” Although few of us can quit everything else in our lives, hole up for a month, and write thirteen hours a day (at least not yet!), I do hope you’ll get something out of a more feasible two-day Crash workshop.

You’ll be assigned a story to read before our first class so we can dissect its craft during our session. I’ll give you a writing assignment based on what we learned; after, we’ll spend the rest of our session generating work through a variety of guided writing prompts. On the second day of our “Crash,” we’ll share our writing with each other and discuss strategies on how to move forward with what we started. This will be a generative writing class with time allocated to in-class writing. My hope is for you to start something you’ll feel so excited about, you’ll want to continue and finish it as soon as possible.

Course Outline:

Day I: Generative writing day with guided writing prompts and a mini-craft lesson meant to inspire.
Day II: Participants will share their work, ask questions, and more.

This course is held online via Zoom.

Led by

Zeynep Özakat

Zeynep Özakat

Zeynep Özakat was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. Her writing has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, where she won the Fiction Open Contest, in Black Warrior Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Gulf Coast Online. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, where she received The Shirley Jackson Prize in Fiction, The Leonard Brown Prize in Poetry, and a Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Work. She has received scholarships and support from The Disquiet Conference in Lisbon, The Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference, The Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where she was a 2021-2022 Writing Fellow.

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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