Cullman Center Institute for Teachers: How to Forget How to Write Fiction: A Creative Writing Workshop, July 11 - 15

This is a week-long seminar taking place from July 11th to July 15th, 2016.

Creative writing classes and writing manuals are full of so many do’s and don’ts that we tend to forget that the essence of literature is hard to define. Rather than offer writing advice or guidelines, this workshop will explore fiction’s uncertain and volatile boundaries through a series of not-totally-weird writing exercises as well as discussions of texts by writers such as Elias Canetti, J. M. Coetzee, Natalia Ginzburg, Nicanor Parra, and Georges Perec. Throughout the week, each participant will work on a short piece that will be discussed by the group at the end of the workshop.

The Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra has published fiction in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, and McSweeney's, among other publications. He is the author of the novels Bonsai, The Private Lives of Trees, Ways of Going Home, and My Documents. At the Cullman Center he is working on a book about personal libraries.