Fiction ~ Danielle Evans

Workshop Description

ELEMENTS OF SCENE
In this workshop, we will think about scene as a basic element of story, and focus on crafting scenes that move away from abstraction and are able to convey the physical and emotional worlds of the stories we want to tell. Writing exercises will focus on the role of physical detail, dialogue, characterization, and narrative tension in a successful scene. Workshop will include the discussion of assigned short-fiction, in-class and take-home writing activities, and class critique of work produced during the course.

 

Danielle Evan’s first book, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (Penguin, 2010), won the 2011 Paterson Prize for Fiction and the 2011 Hurston-Wright award for fiction, was a co-winner of the 2011 PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize for a first book and an honorable mention for the 2011 PEN/Hemingway award, and was a National Book Foundation 5 under 35 selection for 2011.  Her stories have appeared in magazines including The Paris Review, A Public Space, Callaloo, and Phoebe, and have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2008 and 2010.  A graduate of Columbia University, Danielle received an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, and was the Carol Houck Smith fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.  She currently lives in Washington DC and teaches literature and creative writing at American University.