Ripe Fruit IV : Prose Critique

CRAFT OF FICTION WORKSHOP
Two sequential eight-week workshops led by Lauren Alwan

For those working in any prose form—memoir, short fiction, or novel. These two classes are de-signed to work together, providing a solid grounding in basic craft techniques and advance skills for reading and analyzing works of fiction. The craft class, 1 x 8 x 8, examines eight craft topics over eight weeks. Students read and discuss essays on such topics as narrative structure, charac-terization, and use of detail, and exemplary works in print. Once grounded in these fundamentals, students then move on to the fiction workshop. Each student presents two drafts over the course of the class, which are then read and discussed in the context of specific craft issues.

1 x 8 x 8 sample sessions, from 2009:
Structural Design
Essay: “Incremental Perturbation: How to Know if You’ve Got a Plot or Not,” by John Barth. Fiction: “Bullet in the Brain,” by Tobias Wolff.

How Character Forms Action
Essay: “Icebergs, Glaciers and Arctic Dreams: Developing Characters,” by Kim Edwards. Fiction: “Intertextuality,” by Mary Gordon.

How Unexpected Detail Holds Readers
Essay: “On Defamiliarization,” by Charles Baxter. Fiction: “A Worn Path,” by Eudora Welty.

Setting That Drives Character
Essay: “Seattle: 1974,” Charles D’Ambrosio . Fiction: “The High Divide,” Charles D’Ambrosio.

The Point of View Persona
Essay: “Casting Shadows, Hearing Voices: The Basics of Point of View,” by Valerie Miner. Fiction: “Mirror Studies,” by Mary Yukari Waters.

Please note: class topics and readings are subject to change. For information on the next round of Lauren’s classes, contact: info@ripefruitwriting.com

Lauren Alwan's fiction has appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, StoryQuarterly, and most recently in the Sycamore Review, as a finalist for the Wabash Prize in Fiction. She is the recipient of a 2009 Pushcart Prize nomination and a graduate of the Warren Wilson Program for Writers.

A graduate of Ripe Fruit workshops, Lauren has taught fiction for Ripe Fruit since 2003. She resides near Oakland, California, with her husband and daughter.