Writing Workshops
How to Get In: Applying to Fellowships, Residencies, Conferences, and Creative Writing Programs with Jonathan Escoffery
$150
3 Online Sessions
Out of stock
Friday - Sunday June 24 to June 26, 2022
Online via Zoom
Meeting Times:
6:30-8:30pm ET (6/24), 2-4pm ET (6/25 & 6/26)
Whether you want to enhance your craft or win more writerly time and support, chances are that someday you’ll face a competitive application process. At such times, a well-written artist statement can go a long way to make you stand out from the pack. In this session, we’ll discuss the key components that every personal statement and statement of purpose should include, as well as holistic, big-picture considerations for making your application as strong as can be. A necessary and practical workshop for writers looking to apply for fellowships, residencies, MFA programs, and grants. You will be provided with resources, examples, strategies, and tips that will ensure your applications are taken seriously.
Capacity: 20
Led by
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Jonathan Escoffery
Jonathan Escoffery
Jonathan Escoffery is the author of If I Survive You, forthcoming September 2022 from MCD/ FSG. He is the recipient of the Plimpton Prize for Fiction, the ASME Award for Fiction, an NEA fellowship, the Waasnode Fiction Prize, and the Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award. His writing has appeared in the Paris Review, American Short Fiction, Electric Literature, The Best American Magazine Writing 2020, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships and funding from Aspen Words, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, Kimbilio Fiction, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and elsewhere. Jonathan attends the University of Southern California’s Ph.D. in Creative Writing Program and is a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
By Jonathan Escoffery
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If I Survive You
By Jonathan Escoffery
Published by FSG
In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on first through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession, living in a house so cursed that the pet fish launches itself out of its own tank rather than stay. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated, often to its own detriment, by what their younger son, Trelawny, calls “the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive.”
Masterfully constructed with heart and humor, the linked stories in Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You center on Trelawny as he struggles to carve out a place for himself amid financial disaster, racism, and flat-out bad luck. After a fight with Topper—himself reckoning with his failures as a parent and his longing for Jamaica—Trelawny claws his way out of homelessness through a series of odd, often hilarious jobs. Meanwhile, his brother, Delano, attempts a disastrous cash grab to get his kids back, and his cousin, Cukie, looks for a father who doesn’t want to be found. As each character searches for a foothold, they never forget the profound danger of climbing without a safety net.
Pulsing with vibrant lyricism and inimitable style, sly commentary and contagious laughter, Escoffery’s debut unravels what it means to be in between homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and white supremacy. With If I Survive You, Escoffery announces himself as a prodigious storyteller in a class of his own, a chronicler of American life at its most gruesome and hopeful.
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.