BA, Sarah Lawrence College. Taught at the 92nd Street Y and New York University. Her short story, Alcestis, appeared in The Bluelight Corner: Black Women Writing on Passion, Sex, and Romantic Love; her fiction work has appeared in the anthology Mending the World With Basic Books, 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11 (New York University Press) and in The Heretics Bible (Free Press). Her first novel, Knee-Deep in Wonder, won the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Award. Her second novel, The Book of Charlemagne, is forthcoming (Free Press/Simon & Schuster). SLC, 2003–
Undergraduate Courses 2024-2025
Writing
Fiction Workshop
Open, Seminar—Year
WRIT 3310
All great stories are built with good sentences. In this workshop, students will create short stories or continue works-in-progress that will be read and discussed by their peers. Class sessions will focus on constructive criticism of the writer’s work, and students will be encouraged to ask the questions with which all writers grapple: What makes a good story? Have I fully developed my characters? And does my language convey the ideas that I want? We will talk about the writer’s craft in this class—how people tell stories to each other, how to find a plot, and how to make a sentence come to life. This workshop should be seen as a place where students can share their thoughts and ideas in order to then return to their pages and create a completed imaginary work. There will also be some short stories and essays on the art of writing that will set the tone and provide literary fodder for the class.
Faculty
Previous Courses
Writing
Fiction Workshop
Open, Seminar—Year
WRIT 3310
Great stories are built with good sentences. In this workshop, students will create short stories or continue works-in-progress that will be read and discussed by their peers. Class sessions will focus on constructive criticism of the writer’s work, and students will be encouraged to ask the questions with which all writers grapple: What makes a good story? Have I fully developed my characters? And does my language convey the ideas that I want? The writer's craft will be discussed: how people tell stories to each other, how to find a plot, and how to make a sentence come to life. This workshop should be seen as a place where students can share their thoughts and ideas in order to then return to their pages and create a completed imaginary work. There will also be some short stories and essays on the art of writing that will set the tone and provide literary fodder for the class.
Faculty
Fiction Workshop: The Art of Writing
Open, Seminar—Year
Ultimately, a piece of writing is judged by a single criterion: whether a reader finished it. This course is open to fiction writers who want to improve their writing by learning how to lead a reader from the beginning of a story through to the end. In this workshop, students will create short stories or continue works-in-progress to be read and discussed by their peers. Class sessions will focus on constructive criticism of the writer’s work, and students will be encouraged to ask the questions with which all writers grapple: What makes a good story? Have I developed my characters fully, and does my language convey the ideas that I want? Have I crafted good sentences that will lead me inexorably to a great story? We will talk about the writer’s craft in this class—how people tell stories to each other, how to find a plot, and how to make a sentence come to life. This workshop should be seen as a place where students can share their thoughts and ideas in order to then return to their pages and create a completed imaginary work. There will also be short stories and novels that will set the tone and provide literary fodder for the class.