Write Yourself Into Fiction
SORRY, THIS CLASS IS NOW FULL. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE ADDED TO THE WAITLIST, PLEASE SEND US AN EMAIL INFO@STORYSTUDIOCHICAGO.COM. OR CALL US AT 773.477.7710 TO DISCUSS OTHER COURSE OPTIONS.
Tuesday, April 6
The old adage says “write what you know,” but it can be tricky to build a fiction structure on real life experiences and emotions. How do you fictionalize life? How do you know which details to leave in and which to cut out? How do you navigate between real people and characters on the page? How do you write about real people without getting sued?
Award-winning author Heidi Durrow will share her experiences in writing The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, a new novel which recently won the Barbara Kingsolver’s 2008 Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change. This story deftly combines elements of Durrow’s own life with a dramatic event she culled from the news. The process of imagining the lives of fictional characters led her to include questions from her own life, making the novel a deep exploration of mother-daughter relationships and mixed-race identities.
Whether it’s events or emotions you wish to explore, this class will help you rethink turning real life into fiction. We’ll write, read, and discuss various ways of approaching material that is so close to our personal experience it can be difficult to render in words.
We’ll also talk about the logistics of living the writer’s life — the process of writing and getting published.
Who Should Attend: Anyone interested in incorporating aspects of real-life experiences into long or short fiction.
About the Instructor: Heidi W. Durrow has won the Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition and the Chapter One Fiction Contest. She has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the American Scandinavian Foundation, and the Lois Roth Endowment and a Fellowship for Emerging Writers from the Jerome Foundation. Her writing has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, the Literary Review, and others. Her novel, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, a new novel which recently won the Barbara Kingsolver’s 2008 Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change.
Special Note: This class is part of a series of events in the Chicago-area co-sponsored by StoryStudio Chicago, Ragdale, and Open Books.
