Master Class Fiction Writing Workshop

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

The Department of English presents
A Master Class Fiction Writing Workshop
with novelist John Beckman

Professor Beckman will host an intensive, two-session workshop for intermediate-to-advanced fiction writers who are interested in developing their craft. These guided sessions will treat each writer’s work on its own terms. Students’ short stories or excerpts from longer works will be the objects of peer discussion. Professor Beckman will also provide brief tutorials on various mechanics of storytelling, including character, plotting, point of view, and narration.

Workshop Session #1: Tuesday, February 16. Arts 385, 10 am to 1 pm.

Workshop Session #2: Wednesday, February 17. Arts 385, 10 am to 1 pm.

Participation in the workshop is limited. All participants are expected to attend both workshop sessions and are expected to read and comment upon their peers’ work in advance of each meeting. To apply, students must electronically submit their fiction manuscripts of 7-to-10 pages in length that they would like to have workshopped. Deadline: Friday, January 29. Email manuscripts to beckman [at] usna.edu with “MCGILL WRKSP” in the subject line. Students will be notified by February 5th if they have been accepted into the workshop.

John Beckman’s first novel, The Winter Zoo, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His writing has appeared Granta, Book, McSweeney's, The Washington Post, the anthology Wild East: Stories from the Last Frontier, and elsewhere. He has taught literature at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, the University of Bordeaux, France, and is currently an Associate Professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.