In this hybrid course, students have a grounding in the tenets and technical terms that are the building blocks of The Writers Studio approach. Students in their first, second, or third term of the course are considered Intermediate and will have their work critiqued during the first half of each class. Students who have taken more than three terms are considered Advanced and will have their work critiqued during the second half of each class. All students are welcome to stay for both portions of the class, or to come only for their specific level.

Intermediate students focus on enriching their work by creating an individual voice and tapping into an underlying emotion. The goal is to help students use a full range of techniques to create and sustain an effective artistic distance, thereby gaining greater emotional freedom and depth in their work.

Advanced students are asked to recognize the specific qualities that make a narrative or poem engaging and entertaining to the reader. They continue deepening their understanding of and comfort with a full range of techniques to create and sustain distance, and they push themselves further to tap into their personal material. Advanced students may begin working on completing stories and poems.

This class meets at 2021 Albany Post Road, Croton-on-Hudson, New York. The class meets for eight weeks; the teacher will email a schedule with dates prior to the start of the class.

Open only to students who have completed two terms of The Writers Studio Hudson River Town Workshop and upon the recommendation of the teacher.

If you have questions about the class, please email Nancy Matsunaga at [email protected].

Instructor

Writers Studio Teacher

Nancy Matsunaga

Nancy Matsunaga is a freelance writer and editor who studied comparative literature at Oberlin College and received her MA in teaching English as a second language. She has been teaching with the Writers Studio since 2007, and she was the founder and director of the Amsterdam branch of the school. Her stories have been published in the journals Calyx and American Writers Review and anthologized in The Writers Studio at 30. She was a finalist for the 2021 Chester B. Himes Memorial Short Fiction Prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. After ten years in Munich, she has recently returned to the New York area, where she is working on a novel and a book of short stories.

"Every week, I presented a new story. Finally something did click, the very thing that’s their specialty at The Writers Studio, emotional content. Before, my work was dead. When I brought in my breakthrough story, I felt I was carrying a weird animal in my bag. It was the first story I sold."

Jennifer Egan, former Writers Studio student, Winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

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