Live Seminar Via Zoom Wednesday, June 25th, 2025

The class will meet 7PM - 9:00PM EST

Taught by Karen E. Bender, author of two collections; Refund, which was a Finalist for the National Book Award, shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Story Prize, and Longlisted for the Story prize, and The New Order, which was Longlisted for the Story prize. A new collection is forthcoming. Her novels are Like Normal People and A Town of Empty Rooms. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Ploughshares, Zoetrope, The Yale Review, The Harvard Review, Story, Guernica, and others, have been reprinted in Best American Short Stories and Best American Mystery stories and won three Pushcart prizes.

Get to know Karen in our Meet the Teaching Artist series.

Building a character’s interiority consists of many elements. Characters are full of many thoughts and perceptions about other characters. How does a character judge another? Envy another person? Admire another person? 

Examining the ways writers show how characters react to one another helps create a sense of their interior worlds.  In this seminar, we will look at stories by Mavis Gallant, John Cheever, Deborah Eisenberg, Raymond Carver, Eve Babitz and ZZ Packer to see how they incorporate character’s use of judgments, envy, admiration,  creating a complex and living consciousness.

We will spend the first hour discussing the stories and the second hour doing writing exercises.

• Through close reading of stories, learn different ways that writers use judgment, envy and admiration as a way to access the interior worlds of their characters.
• Learn how judgment, envy, and admiration connect with action in stories.                
• Develop a character through these perceptions via writing prompts.               
  
• Learn one element of interiority as a way to develop characters.
  

COURSE EXPECTATIONS: 

We'll review the different ways authors use perceptions to build interiority in a story and then write generative exercises to practice these methods. Students should come to class ready to write and will have opportunities to share work if they would like. Students will leave the class with various techniques they can use to convey interiority through character perceptions.

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

• Instructor: Karen E. Bender

• Live Seminar Via Zoom Wednesday, June 25th, 2025

• The class will meet 7PM - 9:00PM EST

• Can't Make It Live? No problem! The session will be recorded and available to watch after the seminar concludes.

• Tuition is $75.

Contact us HERE if you have any questions about this seminar.

Instructor Karen E. Bender is the author of two collections; Refund, which was a Finalist for the National Book Award, shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Story Prize, and Longlisted for the Story prize, and The New Order, which was Longlisted for the Story prize. A new collection is forthcoming. Her novels are Like Normal People and A Town of Empty Rooms. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Ploughshares, Zoetrope, The Yale Review, The Harvard Review, Story, Guernica, and others, have been reprinted in Best American Short Stories and Best American Mystery stories and won three Pushcart prizes. Her work has been read at the Selected Shorts program at Symphony Space and on Levar Burton Reads, She has taught for many highly regarded MFA programs, including the University of Iowa, Hollins University, and Warren Wilson College and currently teaches for the MFA Programs at SUNY Stony Brook and Alma College. Visit her website here.