Cullman Center Institute for Teachers: Making the Supernatural Real: A Creative Writing Workshop in Fiction with Téa Obreht

Event Details

Téa Obreht, Instructor

This is a week-long seminar from July 21 – July 25, 2014

In this workshop, we will examine some basic techniques of storytelling. Using a wide range of texts, from folktales to Flannery O’Connor, Poe to Kelly Link, Gabriel García Márquez to Karen Russell, we will explore how the bizarre, the mythical, and the supernatural work in a fictional narrative. Daily writing exercises will help each participant compose a short piece of fiction, which will be discussed at the end of the week in a marathon workshop.

Téa Obreht’s first novel, The Tiger’s Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and was a 2011 National Book Award Finalist. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Vogue, Esquire, and The Guardian, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. The New Yorker named her one of its “20 Under 40” best American fiction writers in 2010, and the National Book Foundation honored her on its list of “5 Under 35.” She is currently a fellow at the Cullman Center (class of 2013-14). 

 

The deadline to apply to the 2014 summer seminars has passed.