Sunday, February 4th, 2024

Live Seminar Via Zoom 11AM – 2PM CST

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

Led by Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, a National Magazine Award finalist. His debut story collection Barefoot Dogs won the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction, and was named a Best Book by Kirkus Reviews, San Francisco Chronicle, Texas Observer and PRI's The World. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Texas Monthly, The Millions, and elsewhere.

Want to learn how to turn your true-life experiences or observations into stories?

Writers are often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” The answer is usually some version of this: “All around me.”

We draw upon current events, personal memories, family anecdotes, and weird news from all sorts of media for our storytelling material. It’s an impulse that comes naturally to hear a story on the news and think, “I should write about that.”

The best writers know how to turn those random, unexpected pieces of inspiration into fully developed essays, stories, and novels. This class will teach students to observe reality with the eyes of a journalist and the imagination of a fiction writer in order to translate facts and events into riveting stories in any genre.

Students will be sent several published pieces to read before the class and should bring them with them. The goal of the seminar is to take facts, details, and anecdotes and learn how to turn them into fully-realized stories.

TAKE THIS CLASS IF:

• You're writing fiction or nonfiction in any genre.
• You're starting a new project
• You're finding the factual constraints of your potential story too limiting.

STUDENT TESTIMONIALS:

"Antonio is wonderful and insightful!"

"The instructor was excellent at communicating the theoretical and abstract, while at the same time demonstrating with concrete examples."

"This class showed me that there are bridges that can be built, which connect what personally interests and inspires me, to what can be successfully marketed."

ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:

This class will meet via Zoom on Sunday, February 4th, 2024 from 11AM - 2PM CST

• Antonio Ruiz-Camacho | Live via Zoom

• Sunday, February 4th, 2024

• Meeting on Zoom from 11AM - 2PM CST

• The seminar is fully ONLINE and meets via Zoom
  

Instructor Antonio Ruiz-Camacho was born and raised in Toluca, Mexico. He moved to the U.S. at the age of 31 and began to write in English at 35. A former Knight Journalism fellow at Stanford University and a Dobie Paisano fellow in fiction by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters, he earned his MFA from The New Writers Project at UT Austin. He is a National Magazine Award finalist and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Texas Monthly and elsewhere. He is the author of the story collection Barefoot Dogs (Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction 2015) and the forthcoming novel The Healing Room.