Writing Workshops

Haunted: A Two-Day Generative Fiction Workshop with Zeynep Özakat (February 2025)

$150

2 Sessions

Out of stock

Saturday & Sunday 12:00 pm EDT - 3:00 pm EDT February 8 to February 9, 2025

Online via Zoom

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Why do we persistently write about certain things and what persists us to write? In this class, we will talk about our obsessions. What haunts us? What do we unknowingly keep writing about? What do we keep coming back to? In this weekend-long intensive, we’ll generate work from the things that try to possess us: from what lurks in the background, trying to enter by scratching at the door.

You’ll be assigned a story to read before our first class so we can dissect its craft during our first session. We’ll spend the rest of our session generating work through a variety of guided writing prompts and discussions. On the second day of our intensive, we’ll share our writing with each other and discuss strategies for moving 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 use this time to dive deeper into the stories you fear writing or simply can’t let go of.

Course Outline:

Day I: Generative writing day with guided writing prompts and craft discussions.
Day II: Participants will share their work and provide feedback for their peers.

Disclaimer: There will be no séance.

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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