Cullman Center Institute for Teachers: Deconstructing Voice: A Creative Writing Workshop with Ayana Mathis

Ayana Mathis, Instructor 

This is a week-long seminar from July 13 – July 17, 2015

New writers are urged (relentlessly) to "find their voices"-- a frustrating bit of advice if ever there was one. Voice is among the most elusive of terms. What is it, exactly? Of what does it consist? How does one go about developing it? Certainly voice includes style, but that is so unique and organic to each writer that it only further confuses the issue. In this workshop we will dismantle voice into practical elements: narration (point of view), character development, dialogue, and finally, the sentence. To aid in this dismantling, we will examine writing by Julio Cortázar, Edward P. Jones, and Eudora Welty, among others. Throughout the week, workshop participants will be given exercises in “voice” and each will write a short piece of fiction.

Ayana Mathis is the author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, a 2013 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, an NPR Best Book of the Year, and a top selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0. Mathis's work has been published in The New York Times, The Financial Times, Esquire, and The New Yorker. At the Cullman Center this year she is working on a novel about a septuagenarian blues singer.

The deadline to apply for this seminar has passed.