Short Stories 101: The Beginning

We’ve moved online! All workshops are conducted via Zoom, a virtual platform that allows you to participate in exercises and contribute to group conversation. For morning and noontime workshops, your Zoom link will be sent the day before. For afternoon and evening workshops, your Zoom link will be sent the day of, at least one hour prior to the start of your workshop. 

Member Price: $30
Deadline to Register: September 23, 5 pm
Instructor: Brian Wood

In this introductory session, we will explore where our story concepts come from, interrogate our ideas for depth and drama, and how to develop them. We also will examine strategies and craft tips for hooking our reader with an engaging opening scene. As with all sessions in this series, we will draw examples from Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, and ZZ Packer’s “Brownies.”

Brian Wood is the author of Joytime Killbox (BOA, 2019). He has served as the Managing Editor of Reed Magazine and the Fiction Editor for POST. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Jose State University, and his work earned him a Ludwig Scholarship for Excellence in Creative Writing, as well as the James Phelan Award for Short Fiction and Familiar Essays. He is the co-host of the Two Month Review podcast produced by Open Letter Press. He can be found on Twitter at @BrianWood_.