Writing Workshops

Writing That Is Not Writing: A Generative Workshop with Adrienne Raphel

$150

1 Session

In stock

Sunday, 1:00 pm EDT - 5:30 pm EDT September 13, 2026

The Center for Fiction

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Résumé. Receipt. Recipe. Ticket. Calendar entry. Real estate listing. Advertorial. Fabric tag. Writing is around us all the time—and we are writing all the time, even if we’re not “writing.” Marginalia and the unplanned can give us the most insight into our lives (who are we in interstitial spaces?) and also teach us so much about characters.

In this day-long generative workshop, we’ll amass examples of writing that is not writing and write through these informal forms. What statistics does your character’s fitness tracker produce over the course of a week? What drugstore receipt is buried at the bottom of a bag? We’ll also use these unplanned sources of writing as formal constraints: try writing a fabric tag, a dictionary definition, a guidelines sign on a map.

We’ll also do activities and workshops around these short bursts, such as a short scavenger hunt (ability and weather permitting) around Fort Greene to find modes of writing in the world. We will discuss how these exercises can stand on their own, and how to build these unconventional forms into more conventional genres. What can we learn about a character by their paraphernalia to understand them more fully? At the end of the workshop, participants will hold in their hands new writing that they can use as standalone pieces or adapt as part of a larger project.

Teaching Style: My class evolves like a coral reef: I provide the initial seeds and scaffolding, and the class generates the material and energy that directs its final shape. It’s an organic process that is collaborative and instructor-guided, but never dictated. I provide a dynamic room full of generative exercises, time to write, time (and never pressure) to share, and workshopping opportunities.

Level: Introductory

This course is held in person at The Center for Fiction.

We offer a limited number of need-based scholarships for our Reading Groups and Writing Workshops, covering 50% of tuition. Applicants selected for scholarships will be notified one week prior to the first meeting. To apply for a scholarship, please fill out this form.

Led by

Adrienne Raphel

Adrienne Raphel

Adrienne Raphel is the author of Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can’t Live Without Them (Penguin Press), an Editor’s Choice from the New York Times Book Review; and the poetry collections What Was It For (Rescue Press), winner of the Rescue Press Black Box Poetry Prize, and Our Dark Academia (Rescue Press). Her writing appears in the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Paris Review, etc. She is an English professor at CUNY Baruch College and also teaches with the low-residency MFA program at Southern New Hampshire University and with the Writer’s Foundry MFA at St. Joseph’s University. She holds a PhD from Harvard, a MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and a BA from Princeton.

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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