Craft Class - Winter 2021-2022

The Writers Studio’s Craft Class is an eight-week course that meets weekly during the school’s four sessions. All students begin taking it when they enter their third term of the Level III workshop, but it’s also open to students in Level I and II, and even to those who aren’t enrolled in a workshop.

This class, an integral part of The Writers Studio approach to creative writing, teaches students how to read fiction and poetry as writers. By identifying and closely studying the techniques at play in published work — both contemporary and classic — students discover how literary writers have achieved their artistic goals. In the process, students greatly expand their own knowledge of the writer’s craft, which improves their own writing and sharpens their critical skills. We are never content talking in a general way about the power or prowess of a particular celebrated author. We do something much more useful: we pinpoint how that author’s paragraphs or stanzas were put together to achieve such power. We look at how the narrative or verse moves forward, who the narrator is, what is stated directly and what is left out and why, and how the narrator’s tone plays against the underlying emotion.

Whether or not you attend the class in person, the craft class is available as a subscription audio file on our secure website. You can download it to your computer or MP3 player, and we offer technical assistance for students new to the technology. It is a lecture class in an informal classroom setting, taught by various Writers Studio teachers and the occasional author as guest teacher, with participation by advanced Writers Studio students. Each craft class ends with a suggested exercise based on the narrative technique studied that week. These exercises form the basis for the work students bring in to their respective workshops.

Over the years, the reading list for this class has included the short stories, novels and poems of a wide array of venerable and up-and-coming authors, including fiction writers Isaac Babel, Lucia Berlin, Bonnie Jo Campbell, John Cheever, Anton Chekhov, Juno Diaz, Julia Glass, Clarice Lispector, Thomas Mann, Gabriel García Márquez, Lorrie Moore, Toni Morrison, Akhil Sharma, Gary Shteyngart, Colson Whitehead and John Updike; poets Kim Addonizio, Yehuda Amichai, Elizabeth Bishop, Rita Dove, Jorie Graham, Pablo Neruda, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, James Tate, Walt Whitman, James Wright, and Adam Zagajewski.

Craft Class Reading List - Winter 2021-2022

Tuesdays 6:30 – 8:00pm EST

Our dedicated Bookshop store, already populated with the current Craft Class reading list, is here.* You can also purchase Craft Class books from the Strand Bookstore in NYC, where we hold many of our readings and events, or Bookshop or Amazon. Links for the Strand and Amazon are below.

December 7: Ruth Padel, Beethoven Variations: Poems on a Life (Knopf) Taught by Peter Krass

Strand: Beethoven Variations: Poems on a Life

Bookshop.org

Amazon: Beethoven Variations: Poems on a Life

December 14: Pushcart Prize 2021 Taught by Sylvie Bertrand Stories include "The Shame Exchange" by Karen E. Bender, "Vows" by David Means, "My Father Recycles" by Naira Kuzmich, "Hoeing Beets 1964 Skagit Valley" by Samuel Green, and "The Out-&-Proud Boy Passes the Baseball Boy" by Josh Tvrdy. (Pushcart)

Strand: Pushcart Prize XLV: Best of the Small Presses, 2021 Edition

Bookshop.org

Amazon: Pushcart Prize XLV: Best of the Small Presses, 2021 Edition

December 21: Natasha Trethewey, Memorial Drive (Ecco) Taught by Lucinda Holt

Strand: Memorial Drive

Bookshop.org

Amazon: Memorial Drive

January 4, 2022: Carl Phillips, Pale Colors in a Tall Field (FSG) Taught by Lisa Bellamy

Strand: Pale Colors in a Tall Field

Bookshop.org

Amazon: Pale Colors in a Tall Field

January 11: Rosanna Warren, So Forth (Norton). Taught by Rosanna Warren. Discussion led by Philip Schultz.

Strand: So Forth

Bookshop.org

Amazon: So Forth

January 18: André Gide, The Immoralist (Penguin Classics) Taught by Lesley Dormen

Strand: The Immoralist

Bookshop.org

Amazon: The Immoralist

January 25: Kirsten Valdez Quade, The Five Wounds (Norton) Taught by Kirsten Valdez Quade. Discussion led by Cynthia Weiner.

Strand: The Five Wounds

Bookshop.org

Amazon: The Five Wounds

February 1: Saul Bellow, Seize the Day, Introduction by Cynthia Ozick (Penguin Classics), Taught by Philip Schultz.

Strand: Seize the Day

Bookshop.org

Amazon: Seize the Day

*The Writers Studio receives a small referral fee when you purchase through Bookshop or click through Amazon-linked titles. This does not affect the price you pay for the books.