Writing Workshops

Writing and Other Art Forms: Learning from Paintings, Sculpture, and Music with Omer Friedlander

$150

2 Sessions

In stock

Saturday & Sunday 11:30 am EDT - 2:30 pm EDT May 11 to May 12, 2024

Online via Zoom

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In this two-day intensive, we will explore the many connections between the making of fiction and other art forms, including paintings, sculpture, and music. We will do writing prompts that respond to paintings by Caravaggio, Rembrandt, and Degas. From these painters we will learn about setting the scene, and creating movement on the page. We will compare the sculpture ‘Laocoön and his Sons’ with a Turner painting of the sea, and discuss how to write about “heaviness” versus “lightness.” We will read Ursula K. LeGuin on the musicality of the sentence, and learn about the sound and rhythm on the sentence level from writers like Claire Keegan, Toni Morrison, and Zadie Smith. We will respond to music (Glenn Gould playing Bach and Lee Morgan playing “I remember Clifford”) in our writing prompt, working on creating a mood, atmosphere, or ‘voice’ in our writing.

Course Outline

Session I: Writing, Painting and Sculpture
Session II: Writing and Music

Led by

Omer Friedlander

Omer Friedlander

Omer Friedlander is the author of the short story collection The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land, winner of the Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Award and a finalist for the Wingate Prize. The book was chosen as an American Library Association Sophie Brody Medal Honor Book for outstanding achievement in Jewish Literature and longlisted for the Story Prize. Omer has a BA in English Literature from the University of Cambridge and an MFA from Boston University, where he was supported by the Saul Bellow Fellowship. He was a Starworks Fellow in Fiction at New York University. His collection has been translated into several languages, including Turkish, Dutch, Italian, and Slovak. His writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Fellowship and Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. He currently lives in New York City and teaches creative writing at Columbia University.

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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