Jai Chakrabarti is the author of the novel A Play for the End of the World, which won the National Jewish Book Award, and was short-listed for the Rabindranath Tagore Prize and long-listed for the PEN/Faulkner Award; and the story collection A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness (both Knopf). His short fiction has been anthologized in the O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, and awarded a Pushcart Prize.
Workshop
Jai Chakrabarti
Online
Sundays, June 23–July 14, 2024
This class has already happened.
Poetic Forms in Fiction
The rational mind can feel like the enemy of fiction, trapping us in patterns that feel too well-worn, lacking some essential mystery. How do we allow the unexpected beauty of the subconscious to find us on the page? In this workshop we’ll experiment with applying the structures and patterns we find in poetry to our fiction, to see what we might discover. We’ll look at forms such as the haibun, the ghazal, the zuihitsu, and the golden shovel to understand how the art of these constraints can influence short stories and novels. We’ll read poetry by authors including Aimee Nezhukumatathil, John Ashbery, Kimiko Hahn, and Terrance Hayes and fiction from writers like Vladimir Nabokov, Clarice Lispector, Lorrie Moore, and David Means to trace how the gifts of poetic form might influence our prose. Most importantly, we’ll make space for generative exercises, allowing us to tap into the creative core of the lyric element to discover the shapes of new stories.
Sundays, June 23–July 14, 2024
3:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m. ET
4 sessions
Online on Zoom
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