Class Starts Wednesday, May 22nd, 2024

The class will meet weekly via Zoom (Wednesdays, 8:00PM ET - 10:00PM ET).

Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button (lower left) to talk with us.

Led by Instructor Zeynep Özakat, who was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. Her writing has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, where she won the Fiction Open Contest, in Black Warrior Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Gulf Coast Online. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, where she received The Shirley Jackson Prize in Fiction, The Leonard Brown Prize in Poetry, and a Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Work. She has received scholarships and support from The Disquiet Conference in Lisbon, The Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference, The Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where she was a 2021-2022 Writing Fellow.

An introductory class for those looking to get some feedback on their writing and those looking to develop a keener editorial eye for their own work.

Maybe you've been writing for years but have never received feedback for your work or maybe you just started writing and would like more direction in terms of how to continue... well, this class can help!

In this eight-week workshop, writers will be able to polish their short stories through feedback from the instructor and their peers. The main goal of this class isn’t to generate new work but to look deeper at work that we already have so we can see where to edit and how.

This is not a generative writing class, but a workshop that relies on having your writing as the focal point. Writers should enter this class with work that is ready to submit. Now this doesn’t mean that your stories or chapters need to be completed or that you even need to feel confident about the work that you’re submitting. It just means that you have “something” that you would like to show, even if that means you don’t know where it is going yet or even what it is. This “something” could be a couple of pages, a couple of scenes, a finished short story, or the first chapter to something that feels longer.

We’ll work as collective to help you figure out some of the questions you might already have about your writing, such as: “Where could/should this story continue towards?” “Does this feel finished? When do I know when it’s finished?” “Does this character seem realistic?” “How do I write a story that does x, y or z?” etc.

Class will consist of part workshop, part craft discussion through assigned readings. I might tweak the assigned readings according to the class if I feel like a particular story might be a better fit. We’ll spend some time going over the readings and discussing how we can “steal” some techniques from accomplished stories/chapters.

Writers will leave class with a better idea of how to edit their own work and a keener editorial eye.

COURSE OUTLINE:

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• Students will learn to read like a writer.
• Students will develop a keener editorial eye for their own work.
• Students will practice the art of editing through giving feedback to their peers work.
  

PRAISE FOR ZEYNEP:

"The hallmark of Zeynep Özakat's writing is the deep empathy with which she creates her characters; from the lead characters to the minor ones—all of them are created with such specificity that exemplifies the care she brings to the enterprise of storytelling. That, along with Özakat's ability to skillfully navigate time in fiction, write crisp dialogue, and strike a balance between the humorous and the melancholic, makes her prose intelligent, moving, and exciting. This is a great opportunity to learn from an excellent storyteller." -Shastri Akella, author of “The Sea Elephants”

"Zeynep’s passion and commitment to helping writers tell their stories is absolutely unmatched. She possesses the spirit, skill, and sheer electricity that we need so desperately injected into the world again. "-Mina Hamedi, agent at Janklow & Nesbit

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

This class meets weekly via Zoom. Come prepared for a super fun class with live interaction on Zoom each week and plenty of writing, reading, and talking!

• Instructor: Zeynep Özakat
  
• Class Starts Wednesday, May 22nd, 2024
  
• The class will meet via Zoom on Wednesdays, 8PM ET - 10PM ET
  

Instructor Zeynep Özakat was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. Her writing has appeared in Glimmer Train Stories, where she won the Fiction Open Contest, in Black Warrior Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Gulf Coast Online. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, where she received The Shirley Jackson Prize in Fiction, The Leonard Brown Prize in Poetry, and a Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Work. She has received scholarships and support from The Disquiet Conference in Lisbon, The Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference, The Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where she was a 2021-2022 Writing Fellow.