Victoria Redel

The story begins, “Once upon a time,” or the story begins, “Call me Ishmael,” and with this initiating sentence a fictional world unspools. The word and the sentence are our first tools as writers; and, in this class, we will study how sentences shape story. We will also consider how the story requires more than great sentences. This is a class heavy on writing and reading. We will develop our craft through weekly exercises and experiments in form, character, narrative, stance, authority, point of view, dialogue, scene, situation, style, tropes, and syntax. Additionally, memory as a tool will be considered—both the writer’s memory as it is reimagined, reinvented in a work of fiction (family memory, historical memory), as well as the use of memory inside a work of fiction (character memory, place memory, historical memory). Students will develop stories from first draft through at least one extensive revision.

The story begins, “Once upon a time.” Or the story begins, “Call me Ishmael.” And with this initiating sentence, a fictional world unspools. The word and the sentence are our first tools as writers; and, in this class, we will study how sentences shape story. We will also consider how the story requires more than great sentences. This is a class heavy on writing and reading. We will develop our craft through exercises and experiments in form, character, narrative, stance, authority, point of view, dialogue, scene, situation, style, tropes, and syntax. Additionally, memory as a tool will be considered—both the writer’s memory as it is reimagined, reinvented in a work of fiction, family memory, historical memory, as well as the use of memory inside a work of fiction (character memory, place memory, historical memory). Students will develop their work from first draft through at least one extensive revision. Handouts will include: George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, in which four Russians give a master class on reading, writing and life, the rest TBD.

This workshop will focus on the development of craft, expanding the writer’s understanding and range of character, syntax, narrative strategies, and narrative risk. We will look at published works of fiction to understand how a writer has accomplished what she/he has accomplished in a specific novel or short story and what we as writers can learn and make use of in the advancement of our own craft. In addition to working on drafts and revisions of fictions, there will be weekly writing experiments that will, hopefully, upend and expand preconceptions of language and structure in the shaping of fiction.

This workshop is for writers considering novel writing. It is a class that will involve a good deal of mucking around in the beginnings of a novel, trying to find the first nub and hopefully more; so it will involve a good deal of trial, error, trial, error...or, seen another way, the great frustrating, and often exhausting, novel adventure. We will spend quite a bit of time on the opening of a novel, the structure, voice, POV, initial imagery, recurring imagery, recursion, and novel shapes. We will look to many published works and essays to study the range and possibility from linked-story novels, genre-bending novels, experimental novels, and character-driven novels. Writers to be studied include: Marquez, Lispector, Strout, Baldwin, Twain, Dickens, Winterson, Ward, Fitzgerald, Schutt, Robinson, and Morrison.

Muriel Rukeyser wrote, “If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.” In this workshop, we will explore what influences the subject and fabric of our poems and what is our necessity as a poet? We’ll explore how other forms of art, science, nature, philosophy, mythology, religion, etc. can inspire our work as poets. What shapes our own education as a poet? How has place influenced us? What are the deep sounds and music that reside within us? We’ll read and discuss poems and essays as paths to consider opportunities, strategies, and mysteries integral to the questions that we ask of our own poems. Our reading list will be somewhat organic but will include: Ai, Betts, Bachelard, Gay, Frost, Gluck, Lux, Levine, and Whitman.

This class will be a semester-long exploration in both writing and reading fiction. We are going to try reading as writers, looking at how the thing is made, and how making creates and shapes meaning. We will look at elements of craft, working on exercises and experiments in form, character, narrative, stance, authority, dialogue, scene, tropes, and syntax. In addition to workshop, we will have weekly experiments with form, voice, and style. Revision is an essential part of this workshop.

This yearlong class will be an exploration of both writing and reading fiction. We will learn to read as writers—looking at how the thing is made—and how, through writing, meaning is shaped in fiction. In the fall semester, full attention will be given to the short story. We will develop our craft through weekly exercises and experiments in form, character, narrative, stance, authority, point of view, dialogue, scene, situation, style, tropes, and syntax. Additionally, memory as a tool will be considered—both the writer’s memory as it is reimagined/reinvented in a work of fiction (family memory, historical memory) and the use of memory inside a work of fiction (character memory, place memory, historical memory). Students will develop stories from first draft through at least one revision. Conference work will involve additional reading and the completion of at least one additional short story.

The poet Ranier Maria Rilke wrote about shaping art: “You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood, whose mystery is still unexplained; to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy, and you didn’t pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely, with so many profound and difficult transformations; to days in quiet restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea; to the sea itself; to seas, but it is still not enough to be able to think of all that.” In this class, we will explore the uses of childhood and memory as springboards for fiction. How do fiction writers move from the kernel of lived experience to the making of fiction? How do we use our past to develop stories that are not a retelling of “that’s what happened” but, rather, an opportunity to develop characters with their own stories, their own integrity and truth? How do we switch from our personal perspective to empathic observations of others and other narratives. How do we work with what we have half-known or half-observed to shape rich stories and rounded characters? And having created characters, what is their relationship to memory? In this class, we will develop short stories from writing experiments and an intensive study of craft as we read short fictions, novels, and essays.

This semester-long course in writing fiction and the practice of learning to read as a writer will be a class that demands serious daily attention to the practice of writing and revision. Full attention will be given to the short story in all of its possibilities. Weekly writing experiments and weekly close reading of published short stories will be assigned, as well as occasional craft essays. We will break down the writing process of a single short story so that, week by week, students move from what makes a strong first sentence to first paragraph and onward to a workshopped first draft, revision, and final revision. In our reading, we will feature the work of writers who have taught, currently teach, or have emerged from the Sarah Lawrence writing program. Included among them will be the work of Grace Paley, A. M Holmes, Nicole Dennis Benn, Allan Gurganus, Ann Patchett, Clay Mcleod Chapman, and Carolyn Ferrell, as well as many others.

Poet Muriel Rukeyser said, “If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.” In this class, we will read a variety of poems and essays as paths to discussion of what we write, how we write, and even why we write poetry. Consideration of what influences both the subject and fabric of poems will be integral to our conversation and to the questions we ask of our own poems. Thus, we’ll draw not only from the work of other writers but also from art, film, science, history, board games, mythology, religion, and popular culture. This is a class for those writers who are willing to write, write more, and revise even more. The goal in this class is to dig into the particular and peculiar ways that only you can sound in a poem and to develop various sonic effects and strategies to expand your possibilities. Among the poets studied will be the work of remarkable faculty and students who have shaped the Sarah Lawrence writing program, including Grace Paley, Jane Cooper, Thomas Lux, Gerald Stern, Jean Valentine, and Muriel Rukeyser, as well as current poetry faculty.