WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?
WRITING ABOUT PLACE


Scott O'Connor
Enrollment limit: 8 students
$190 new; $170 returning

Every story has to happen somewhere in particular. In fiction, memoir, creative nonfiction, even essays, place generates story, suggests character and holds meaning. Alice Munro writes, “In your life there are a few places, or maybe only one place, where something has happened. And then there are the other places, which are just other places.” Writing that captures the place where something has happened or is happening right now is much more than description of physical location and the weather. In this seminar, we will read and discuss powerful uses of place in fiction, memoir and essays, do sensory writing exercises and write at least one real and one imagined place where things might happen.

This seminar is open to students of all levels. It will be held in East Hollywood, where coffee, sparkling water, and light snacks will be served.


1 SPOT LEFT!

East Hollywood
Two Saturdays
10:00 am to 1:00 pm
June 16 and June 23, 2021


Scott O’Connor is the author of the forthcoming book of stories A Perfect Universe, the novels Untouchable and Half World, and the novella Among Wolves. He has been awarded the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, and his stories have been shortlisted for the Sunday Times/EFG Story Prize and cited as Distinguished in Best American Short Stories. He has written for FOX, Universal Television, The New York Times Magazine, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.

Reviews

“I sat down to read the first story in A Perfect Universe, only to look up several hours later having read the entire book in a single sitting. I fell in love with these characters from the first page. The storytelling in this book—tender and attentive, starkly poetic and always surprising—moved me at every turn.” —Attica Locke, Bluebird, Bluebird and Pleasantville)

"[Half World is an] "invigorating historical thriller . . . Intimately gripping . . . O'Connor writes with fire." —Kirkus Reviews

"[In Untouchable], Scott O'Connor speaks softly and somehow manages to make something beautiful of unspeakable matters . . . a voice so insistently stirring, you want to lean in close to catch every word." —The New York Times Book Review