Writing Workshops

The Craft of Fiction with Clare Beams (Sold Out)

$495

8 Sessions via Zoom

Out of stock

Once a Week* Thursdays, 6:30 pm EDT - 8:30 pm EDT October 15 to December 10, 2020

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

In this course, we will explore the process and the art of fiction writing. The foundation of our work together will consist of a workshop of students’ own fiction. Each week, we will also discuss a fundamental craft element and read and discuss a contemporary short story in which that craft element plays an interesting role; in addition, students can expect a variety of short prompts and exercises to use as springboards. By the end of our eight weeks together, students will have received extensive feedback on two fiction submissions of their own. They’ll also have a clearer sense of fiction as a craft, and of themselves as writers and practitioners of that craft.

Capacity: 12 students

This workshop will take place online via Zoom. Participants will receive instructions for access prior to the first session.

*There will be no class on November 26.

Led by

Clare Beams

Clare Beams

Clare Beams’s new novel, The Illness Lesson, published in February of 2020 by Doubleday, was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a best book of 2020 by Esquire and Bustle, and a best book of February by Time, O magazine, and Entertainment Weekly; it was recently longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her story collection, We Show What We Have Learned, was published by Lookout Books in 2016; it won the Bard Fiction Prize, was longlisted for the Story Prize, and was a Kirkus Best Debut of 2016, as well as a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. Her fiction appears in One Story, Ecotone, the Common, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and has received special mention in The Best American Short Stories 2013 and The Pushcart Prize XXXV. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and two daughters and has taught creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and St. Vincent College.

By Clare Beams

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The Illness Lesson

By Clare Beams

Published by Doubleday Books

PURCHASE

At their newly founded school, Samuel Hood and his daughter Caroline promise a groundbreaking education for young women. But Caroline has grave misgivings. After all, her own unconventional education has left her unmarriageable and isolated, unsuited to the narrow roles afforded women in 19th century New England.

When a mysterious flock of red birds descends on the town, Caroline alone seems to find them unsettling. But it’s not long before the assembled students begin to manifest bizarre symptoms: Rashes, seizures, headaches, verbal tics, night wanderings. One by one, they sicken. Fearing ruin for the school, Samuel overrules Caroline’s pleas to inform the girls’ parents and turns instead to a noted physician, a man whose sinister ministrations—based on a shocking historic treatment—horrify Caroline. As the men around her continue to dictate, disastrously, all terms of the girls’ experience, Caroline’s body too begins to betray her. To save herself and her young charges, she will have to defy every rule that has governed her life, her mind, her body, and her world.

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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