Overview
Destinations:
Wednesdays, September 23 - November 18
5:30-7:30pm ET
(No class November 11)
Yale Club of NYC (Clarence Day Room)
50 Vanderbilt Ave., New York, NY
Thank you for your interest in this program. At this time, we have a wait list for new registrants. If you would like to sign up for the wait list, click here:
Join Waitlist
Waitlisted registrants will be contacted in the order they registered if space becomes available. *Please fill out a form for each person you want to add to the list.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course is designed to help you gather material for new fiction or ongoing stories through weekly exercises and related readings. Writing by workshop members will be shared in class.
In “The Art of Fiction,” Henry James famously exhorts the novice writer: "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!” He gives the illustration of an English novelist celebrated for her deep understanding of French Protestant youth in one of her tales – an understanding which she revealed came from a scene glimpsed as she ascended a staircase in Paris, “passed an open door where, in the household of a pasteur, some of the young Protestants were seated at table round a finished meal. The glimpse made a picture; it lasted only a moment, but that moment was experience.”
The workshop exercises are designed to engender a regular observing and writing practice. They include collecting found dialogue, pausing to sketch settings, chronicling dramatic interactions, portraying passersby and the people closest to you alike. The only prerequisite: A willingness to ascend staircases with open ears and eyes.
A companion workshop in the winter semester will have a more traditional format of discussion of full drafts with an eye towards revision. The fall workshop is about generating material; the winter about shaping it. But either workshop can be taken on its own.
We’ll meet in a room off the Yale Club Library, with the option for continued confabs after class over food and drink at the club. The class culminates in a group reading with invited guests.
Enrollment is limited to 12 students.
COURSE FORMAT
This course is an interactive in-person seminar course in New York City. This course will meet once a week for 8 classes and will be held in-person at the following location: Yale Club of New York City (Clarence Day Room) 50 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY
Weekly reading or other forms of materials may be assigned. There are no papers or grades. This course does not offer any credits or certificates. This course is intended for learning for the love of learning.
COURSE MATERIALS
Course reading materials will be supplied by the professor. Writing exercises are based on works listed in the course schedule.
Registrants will receive access to the course website about two weeks before the course starts.
COURSE CANCELLATION POLICY
Registrants can cancel and receive a full refund up to September 8. After September 8, there will be no refunds issued.
Yale Alumni College courses are subject to schedule changes as well as cancellations. If Yale Alumni College must cancel any course prior to its start due to low enrollment, you will be notified of this by the cancellation date. Upon cancellation of a course, registrants may transfer their registration to another available course or have the registration fee fully refunded.
In the event of a disruption to the original course schedule, including but not limited to; Professor absence, hazardous weather conditions, or local travel restrictions, Yale Alumni College will do its best to reschedule the missed class for the week immediately following the original end date at the same course time and day.