Live Seminar Via Zoom Tuesday, July 1st, 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.

You hear it often in a workshop--show, don't tell! Effective narratives use both showing (using scene) and summary (telling, using exposition) to tell a story. In this class, we will go over ways that writers use summary in a story.

We will spend the first 45 minutes going over stories that use summary, showing how writers embed them in a story, how much to summarize, how to create active summary.

The next hour we will do generative exercises trying out different ways of using summary and exposition for fiction or memoir.

We wlll be examining works by writers including Tillie Olsen, Jamaica Kincaid, Pam Durban, Jhumpa Lahiri, Cynthia Ozick, Tobias Wolff, and Colin Barrett.

Get ready to create some effective, vivid summary for your work. 

You'll leave class with a better understanding of summary into your stories.

• Master the Balance Between Scene and Summary: Learn how to effectively combine "showing" (scene) and "telling" (summary) techniques to create dynamic, well-paced narratives in both fiction and memoir.
  
• Analyze Summary Techniques from Master Writers: Study examples from acclaimed authors including Tillie Olsen, Jamaica Kincaid, Jhumpa Lahiri, and others to understand various approaches to crafting powerful exposition.
  
• Develop Active Summary Skills: Practice creating vivid, engaging summary that moves your narrative forward rather than stalling it, with specific techniques for making exposition as compelling as scene work.
  
• Apply New Summary Strategies to Your Writing: Complete hands-on exercises designed to help you integrate different types of summary into your own fiction or memoir projects, leaving with practical tools to enhance your storytelling.

COURSE EXPECTATIONS: 

We'll review the different ways authors use summary to build stories 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 summary through these new craft techniques.

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

• Instructor: Karen E. Bender
  
• Live Seminar Via Zoom on Tuesday, July 1st, 2025
• 7PM - 9PM EST
• Note: no recording will be available for this class.
• Tuition is $75.

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