BA, Bennington College. MFA, University of Maryland. MA, Yale Divinity School. Author of Bitter Water Opera (Graywolf Press, 2024) and Imaginary Museums (Soft Skull Press, 2020), which was long-listed for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham award, Polek is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award. She has published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, BOMB, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Polek writes about representations of faith, despair, and the possibilities/limitations of art. She is based in New York and also teaches creative writing at Bennington College. SLC, 2024–
Undergraduate Courses 2024-2025
Writing
Fiction Workshop: Architecture and Narrative
Open, Seminar—Spring
WRIT 3224
“Our house is our corner of the world…it is our first universe,” writes the French philosopher Gustav Bachelard in his influential text, The Poetics of Space. What is the connection between physical spaces, literature, and the imagination? How can our experiences of spaces inform the way that we read and write? This course will use Bachelard’s text as a guide to a larger discussion of architectural structures within fiction, which will begin with works by Shirley Jackson, William Maxwell, and Kathryn Davis and end with the contemporary short story. Students will be expected to complete an observation journal, in which they will record and analyze past and present spaces from their own lives, complete two working drafts of short stories that will be discussed within a workshop setting, and turn in as a final portfolio at the end of term.
Faculty
Fiction Workshop: The Novella
Open, Seminar—Spring
WRIT 3305
Situated between the short story and the novel, this workshop will explore the elusive yet powerful genre of the novella. We will read a wide selection of texts, which will include works by Stefan Zweig, Cesar Aira, Maggie Nelson, Louisa May Alcott, Fleur Jaeggy, Ivan Turgenev, Tao Lin, and Adalbert Stifter. We will discern how fullness can be created within compressed spaces and identify the kinds of stylistic and narrative choices that are distinct to the form, with particular emphasis on place, conflict, pacing, and experimentation. Students will be expected to submit short reading responses each week and complete writing exercises designed to help them write their own novellas, which will be discussed within a workshop setting. Class time will be divided among discussing the assigned reading, engaging in generative writing exercises, and discussing drafts.