Generative fiction with Jamie Quatro
Participants will generate new material daily, based on prompts given out the day prior. Readings and prompts will center on: object, dialogue, animal, body, work, ritual. Workshop members will read excerpts from new material aloud to the class each day, receiving feedback from the instructor and other workshop members. No advance reading is required; feedback will be “on-the-fly,” gut-level responses (a valuable practice in its own right!) The goal is to come away from the week with several “seeds” ready to be developed into full-length stories, essays, or novels.
Each Day
- Instructor will open with a brief grounding exercise (free writing, guided meditation, etc) - 5 min
- Discussion of previous day's (short) assigned readings - 10 min
- Workshop members read 300-500 words of their drafts aloud, followed by feedback from group members (10-15 min per participant). We usually do half the class, take a break, and then the other half
- At the end of class, instructor hands out readings and prompts for next day.
Preparation
The first prompt will be sent a couple weeks before the Glen begins; that way we can get right to reading and workshopping on our first day. After that, subsequent prompts will be given out at the end of class.
Supplies
writing paper and pens
Experience Level
This class is for anyone who wants to develop a daily writing practice; who would like feedback on their work; and who would like to generate new material and ideas.
About the Instructor
Jamie Quatro's novel Fire Sermon published in 2018 with Grove Press (U.S.), Picador (U.K.), and Anansi (Canada). Selected as one of the Top Seven Novels of 2018 by The Economist, and named a Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle, LitHub, Bloomberg, and the Times Literary Supplement, Fire Sermon was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers book, Indie Next pick, and New York Times Editors' Choice.
Quatro's story collection, I Want To Show You More, was a New York Times Notable Book, NPR Best Book of 2013, and was chosen as a favorite book of 2013 by James Wood in The New Yorker. The collection was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award, the Townsend Fiction Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize.
A new novel, Two-Step Devil, will publish with Grove Press in September 2024, to be followed by a story collection, Next Time I'll Be Louder, in 2025.
Quatro's fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, The New Yorker, the Paris Review, the Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Recent essays have appeared at The New Yorker, Oxford American, and as part of the Greenpeace Climate Visionaries series. Quatro is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and Yaddo and teaches in the Sewanee School of Letters MFA program. She lives with her family in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
