$395
6 Sessions via Zoom
Out of stock
Once a week Wednesdays, 6:00 pm EDT - 8:00 pm EDT February 3 to March 10, 2021
Writing credible sex scenes can be daunting for even the most accomplished writer. Why do some sex scenes sizzle while others fall flat on the written page? What’s the right balance of insinuation, inspiration and confrontation when tackling intimacy between characters? These are some of the questions we will explore in “Writing Sex Scenes in Fiction.” In this six-week workshop, we will read the works of writers who write artfully about sex without falling into cliches as well as writers who embrace cliches in service of their characters. Students will workshop novel excerpts or short stories and participate in writing exercises to better understand how character, POV, plot, dialogue, and setting coalesce to make the complications of relationships and the orchestration of intimacy both immediate and emotionally resonant for their readers.
Levels: Introductory, Intermediate
Capacity: 10
This workshop will take place online via Zoom. Participants will receive instructions for access prior to the first session.
Led by
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Regina Porter
Regina Porter
Regina Porter is a graduate of the MFA fiction program at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow and a Rae Armour West Postgraduate Scholar. Her writing has been published in Esquire, the Harvard Review, Tin House, and the Oxford Review. She is also an award-winning playwright. Regina’s debut novel The Travelers was nominated for the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s First Book Award, France’s Prix Medicis for Foreign Literature and Grand Prize for American Literature, a Barnes & Noble Discovery Notable fiction title, longlisted for the 2020 Orwell Political Fiction Prize, and a runner-up for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel
By Regina Porter
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The Travelers
By Regina Porter
Published by Hogarth
Meet James Samuel Vincent, an affluent Manhattan attorney who shirks his modest Irish American background but hews to his father’s meandering ways. James muddles through a topsy-turvy relationship with his son, Rufus, which is further complicated when Rufus marries Claudia Christie.
Claudia’s mother—Agnes Miller Christie—is a beautiful African American woman who survives a chance encounter on a Georgia road that propels her into a new life in the Bronx. Soon after, her husband, Eddie Christie, is called to duty on an air craft carrier in Vietnam, where Tom Stoppard’s play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” becomes Eddie’s life anchor, as he grapples with mounting racial tensions on the ship and counts the days until he will see Agnes again.
These unforgettable characters’ lives intersect with a cast of lovers and friends—the unapologetic black lesbian who finds her groove in 1970s Berlin; a moving man stranded in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during a Thanksgiving storm; two half-brothers who meet as adults in a crayon factory; and a Coney Island waitress whose Prince Charming is too good to be true.
With piercing humor, exacting dialogue, and a beautiful sense of place, Regina Porter’s debut is both an intimate family portrait and a sweeping exploration of what it means to be American today.
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.