Building Interiority in Characters Using Fantasies and Theories with Karen E. Bender, a Zoom Seminar on Thursday, May 22nd, 2025
Live Seminar Via Zoom Thursday, May 22nd, 2025
The class will meet 7PM - 9:00PM EST
**Note: no recording will be available for this class.**
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, one of which is a character's fantasies, theories and plans. How do you use a character’s unique fantasies and theories of the world to help build their interior world?
In this seminar, we will look at stories by Charles D'Ambrosio, Mavis Gallant, Sandra Cisneros and Roberto Bolano to see how they incorporate character’s fantasies and theories into a narrative, building a character’s interiority through the techniques.
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 fantasies and theories as a way to access the interior worlds of their characters
- Develop a character through fantasies and theories via writing prompts.
- Learn one element of interiority as a way to develop characters.
COURSE EXPECTATIONS:
We'll review the different ways authors use fantasies and theories 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 these new craft techniques.
ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:
- Instructor: Karen E. Bender
- Live Seminar Via Zoom on Thursday, May 22nd, 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.