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Virtual Event
Fall 2023, online class, Portland Book Festival, Writing Class, Writing Classes
STYLE AND THE SENTENCE
$285
“Nothing is inherently interesting,” wrote John Gardner, discoursing on the crucial center of any fictive work: style. When it comes to writing short fiction and novels, the ideas we’ve absorbed about narrativizing from our outside lives often don’t apply. Even the most thrilling story, if written without a reverence to form, loses its audience quickly. In this seminar on literary style, we’ll study the most minute of authorial choices, coming to understand how subjectivity comes through on the subconscious level of the sentence. For the first three weeks of the course, we will study excerpts of markedly different stylists, allowing students to develop ideas about not only what style comprises, but how it must be used in fealty to the particular story it tells. For the second three, students will have the opportunity to experiment with and mimic different styles in their own writing, receiving feedback which will guide them in determining the methods best suited to their interests as fiction writers.
This class is a part of Portland Book Festival 2023. Portland Book Festival passes sold separately. For more information about Portland Book Festival, visit pdxbookfest.org.
Access Program
We want our classes to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers class registrations at a reduced rate. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.
Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org if you have questions.
Portland Book Festival
This class starts the week of the Portland Book Festival, and continues weekly until December 6. Passes to the Portland Book Festival sold separately
Kathleen Alcott
en Alcott is the author of the novel The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets. Her fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, ZYZZYVA, The Coffin Factory, The Believer, and elsewhere, and her short story “Saturtion” was listed as notable by The Best American Short Stories of 2014. Born in 1988 in Northern California, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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