This is a workshop for serious fiction writers and essayists. If you have attended an introduction to creative writing class (ENGL 3800) and enjoyed writing short stories and essays, this workshop is for you. During the semester, you will read and discuss a wide range of personal essays that will be about love, dating, identity, relationships, travel, and desire, and you will try to emulate the craft techniques used in those essays to write a personal essay about a topic of your choice. You will also read some gripping short stories that use suspense and mystery to create evocative, riveting narratives that you can't stop reading. We will discuss what makes these stories click and what we can take away from these stories to use in our own work to create similar gripping stories that editors will publish and readers will fall in love with. Your final project will be to research a magazine where you would like to send your story. I will teach you how to write a dummy cover letter that grabs the attention of editors and tips on making your submission stand out.
