This six-week class will focus on fiction that utilizes experimental forms, such as emails, raps, images, multiple-choice questions, and more. Through the bold voices of Douglas Kearney, Evie Shockley, Claudia Rankine, Danez Smith, and Percival Everett, we will explore how these writers employ these uncommon forms as metaphor and world-building to shape unique persona narrators and evocative stories.

Open to writers of all levels and backgrounds, this class is ideal for individuals interested in learning new styles and playing with language. During each class, we will listen to each other’s writing and offer comments based on the techniques we noticed. This class will provide students with the opportunity to explore atypical forms and find freedom in the unexpected.

"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

Instructor

Writers Studio Teacher

Chelsey Monroe

Chelsey Monroe (she/her) has clashed swords with Sir Ian McKellen, trekked the Amazon jungle, and taught English in Japan and India. A valedictorian of UCLA, Chelsey has worked in education with schools, nonprofits, and museums for over a decade. Chelsey is a longtime student of the Writers Studio, and she is so honored to join the faculty. Her work has appeared in Women On Writing and the Constellation Anthology I. She has won the Writers Studio Ralph Dickey Scholarship, the Murphy School of Writing Get Away to Write Scholarship, and two San Francisco Writers Conference Kevin Smokler Scholarships. Chelsey is working on her fifth novel and uses fantasy and sci-fi to foster possibility and build dialogues between cultures and communities to understand and reimagine our history and society.

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