Read Like A Writer: fiction, craft

In this Zoom workshop held the second and fourth Mondays each month, we'll be exploring stories published in magazines like The New Yorker, Paris Review, Granta, etc., working on craft elements through conversation and prompts. When we read a great story, whether or not we like it, there's something in it that wows us; a phrase, a sentence, a plot twist, characters, an experimental form. We ask ourselves, how did they do that? In this workshop, we'll read stories, explore themes, structure, language, etc. and get to work on our own stories

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2086808181
Meeting ID: 208 680 8181
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/keblF6fuE1

Changes!!!

Today's workshop will be on Donald Barthelme. Known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Along with writers like Pynchon, John Barthes, Vonnegut - he rejected the notion of the novel as a realistic depiction of society, instead worked with caricature, satire and parody. He was known for his modernist “collages,” which are marked by technical experimentation and a kind of melancholy gaiety.

Donald Barthelme, 1931 - 1989.

We've moved the Baldwin/Whitehead workshop to May 10 - sorry for the schedule change, but had to be. Which means that anyone signed up before today might have done so specifically for these writers - if so, please sign up on the May 10th event. But - stay with us here, because Donald Barthelme is a real trip. Just imagine the offspring of Grace Paley and Thomas Pynchon - hilarious, devious, and truer than true. And we can talk about "post modernism".

These stories bring up interesting point about POV because Barthelme inserts his narrator - or is it the author? - right into the story while still maintaining a distant 3rd person narration. Rule breaking alert! Let's see how he does it, how it works and what it feels like to imitate him.

There are three files posted here:
https://burlingtonwritersworkshop.com/files/

0412_Burl_Read_barthelme.pdf
0412_read_Burl_rebecca.pdf
0412_read_The-Donald-Barthelme-Story-Nobody-Talks...

Riki Moss is the author of An Obese White Gentleman In No Apparent
Distress, a BWW member since 2015, attending workshops, reading, writing - her tools as she navigates a difficult draft in her second novel. She’s been a recipient of several VAC development grants, an Arts Matters (NYC) grant, residencies at the Vt Studio Center, at JumpSlide in New Orleans and the UN COP10 in Nagoya, Japan in her parallel lifetime as a visual artist. Most recently, selected as a featured artist in the Vermont Arts Council's I AM...2021 gallery.

rikimossstudio.com
rikimosswriter.com

Questions?
Contact me at riki@burlingtonwritersworkshop.com