Saïd Sayrafiezadeh on the Craft of Writing-- Making the Blank Page Come Alive

This in-person Zoom viewing gathering is open to current students, faculty, and staff. Other members of the SLC community are welcome to view the event on Zoom by registering here.

This craft talk will explore techniques that maximize the visual impact of our prose and increase our awareness of the “sightlessness” of the reader. One of the fundamental things about the relationship between author and reader is that both must bring something to the experience in order to make for an effective story. On the one side, a reader must make an effort in order to be able to “see” what is being portrayed on the page, and on the other, the writer must work to “show.” And yet, how is this actually accomplished? If it’s not possible for an author to capture, for instance, every single detail of the living room-the way a camera would-or of a character’s face, or of a skyline, then what details must be included? Or perhaps more importantly, what details must be left out? Toward this end, we’ll examine the “black marks” on the page as well as the space in which utter silence, colorlessness and absence of detail exist. We’ll look at a range of artistic expression, including drawings, songs, and pictures.

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is the author, most recently, of the story collection, American Estrangement. His memoir, When Skateboards Will Be Free, was selected as one of the 10 best books of the year by Dwight Garner of The New York Times, and his story collection, Brief Encounters With the Enemy, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fiction Prize. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, Granta, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, and New American Stories, among other publications. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction and a Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers’ fiction fellowship. He is a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities and he leads the Creative Nonfiction track in Hunter's MFA program. He also teaches creative writing at Columbia University and New York University, where he received an Outstanding Teaching Award. Purchase Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s work here.