Class Starts on Sunday, March 9th, 2025

The class will meet on Sundays via Zoom (1:00PM ET - 4:00PM ET).

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

Led by Kritika Pandey, the global winner of the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and was on the shortlist in 2018 and 2016. A graduate of the MFA for Poets and Writers, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, she was a resident writer at The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico in 2021. Her writing has been generously supported by a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation and appeared in Granta, Kenyon Review, BBC Radio 4, and The Common, among others.

Read an Interview with Kritika on Writing the Dark, the Funny, and the Darkly Funny and learn more about her in our Meet the Teaching Artist series.

The darkest things in life are also the funniest. The same way that language is a prison camp, but it’s all we really have, and the emptiness of the human soul coexists with the corporeal inconveniences of the body.

So how do you write fiction that expands that mysterious entity called consciousness when even quantum physicists don't quite get it? Does the brain process trauma in the present tense or the past, in the first person or the close third? How do you deal with long stretches of ennui in the lives of your characters without boring your readers? And in an increasingly polarized world, how do you tell stories that are about people and their myriad universal complexities, not just their narrow political leanings?

This workshop will explore those questions and others.

This class is for any writer who has ever attempted to write a short story, irrespective of whether they have a complete work to submit. You’re welcome to share fragmentary notes, multiple excerpts, as well as finished stories under 5000 words.

The workshop will offer you a supportive community of fellow writers who will try to meet you where you are. The idea is to help you figure out how to write that which only you can write, both in terms of voice and content.

In addition to receiving lots of feedback on your writing, as well as commenting on the works of your fellow writers, you will analyze texts/presentations on subjects such as:

• How to pass the time in fiction
• Escalation and causality in storytelling
• The narrative significance of not knowing what comes next
• The similarities between painting, dance, music, architecture, and stories, because everything is design! (In other words, how to to employ repetition of themes, images, language, and plot points to build structural unity)
• How the best dialogue can reveal character, present information, and move the plot forward, all at once

Additionally, there will be ample in-class generative writing to demonstrate the aspects of writing that can't quite be taught.

Take this class if you’ve ever wondered if:

• All stories have already been told
• What makes fiction original is not the WHAT but the HOW
• As a new writer, your job is to touch upon the age-old conundrums of the human condition that have been tackled by other writers a million times before, such as love, loss, spite, loneliness, guilt, belonging, etc., in a way that feels fresh and exciting

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

• You will have one thoroughly considered short story by the end of this workshop.
• You will have a clearer understanding of how to write in a way that amplifies your own unique voice.
• You'll be equipped with new psychoanalytical and philosophical methods of abstracting all works of fiction, including your own. 
  

SELECTED COURSE TEXTS:

• Angles on Dialogue: Douglas Unger
• Why I Decide to Kill Myself and Other Jokes: Douglas Glover
• Structural Unity in Fiction: Sandra Novack
• The School: Donald Barthelme
• Rise, Baby, Rise: George Saunders 
  
• Not Knowing: Donald Barthelme

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

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

• Instructor: Kritika Pandey
  
• This class starts on Sunday, March 9th, 2025
• The class will meet on Sundays via Zoom (1:00PM ET - 4:00PM ET).
  
• Tuition is $299. 

Instructor Kritika Pandey is the global winner of the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and was on the shortlist in 2018 and 2016. A graduate of the MFA for Poets and Writers, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, she was a resident writer at The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico in 2021. Her writing has been generously supported by a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation and appeared in Granta, Kenyon Review, BBC Radio 4, and The Common, among others.