$150
3 Sessions
Out of stock
Friday—Sunday March 31 to April 2, 2023
Online via Zoom
Meeting Details:
Friday 3/31, 6–8pm ET
Saturday 4/1 & Sunday 4/2, 4–6pm ET
Great characters remain essential to any work of fiction. They are a combination of writers’ knowledge, skill, and imagination. During this course, we will examine the process of creating strong, multi-dimensional characters, as well as the principles and techniques that can effectively improve and/or define characters, avoiding cultural cliches and hackneyed stereotypes.
Course Outline
- Session I: Lecture
- Sessions II & III: Readings Discussion & Writing Exercises
Capacity: 20

Led by
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Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry
Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry
Born in Armenia and raised in Soviet Russia, Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry moved to the U.S. in 1995, after having witnessed perestroika and the fall of the Iron Curtain. She earned an M.A. in English from Radford University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Hollins University. Kristina published over fifty stories and received nine Pushcart nominations, as well as three special mentions in the Pushcart Anthologies. Her work appeared in Zyzzyva, Subtropics, Zoetrope: All Story, Joyland, Electric Literature, Indiana Review, the Southern Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, and elsewhere. Kristina is the winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, the Tennessee Williams scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction for her first collection of stories, What Isn’t Remembered, longlisted for the 2022 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and shortlisted for the 2022 William Saroyan International Prize.
Her debut novel, The Orchard, was published by Ballantine Books in March of 2022 and included by NY Post among the best books/top 30 must-read titles of the year. The paperback edition is a Penguin Random House Book Club title, forthcoming in March of 2023. Foreign editions include: Germany, Netherlands, UK, and Italy.
By Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry
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The Orchard
By Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry
Published by Random House
Coming of age in the USSR in the 1980s, best friends Anya and Milka try to envision a free and joyful future for themselves. They spend their summers at Anya’s dacha just outside of Moscow, lazing in the apple orchard, listening to Queen songs, and fantasizing about trips abroad and the lives of American teenagers. Meanwhile, Anya’s parents talk about World War II, the Blockade, and the hardships they have endured.
By the time Anya and Milka are fifteen, the Soviet Empire is on the verge of collapse. They pair up with classmates Trifonov and Lopatin, and the four friends share secrets and desires, argue about history and politics, and discuss forbidden books. But the world is changing, and the fleeting time they have together is cut short by a sudden tragedy.
Years later, Anya returns to Russia from America, where she has chosen a different kind of life, far from her family and childhood friends. When she meets Lopatin again, he is a smug businessman who wants to buy her parents’ dacha and cut down the apple orchard. Haunted by the ghosts of her youth, Anya comes to the stark realization that memory does not fade or disappear; rather, it moves us across time, connecting our past to our future, joys to sorrows.
Inspired by Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry’s The Orchard powerfully captures the lives of four Soviet teenagers who are about to lose their country and one another, and who struggle to survive, to save their friendship, to recover all that has been lost.
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.