Events

Creating Extraordinary Stories from Ordinary Events

A Writing Workshop with Joann Smith

The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College

Playwright and novelist Mehmet Murat Ildan said, “The more you spend your time in the ordinary streets, the more extraordinary things you will learn!”

In this class, we’ll look at authors who write extraordinary stories about ordinary people and ordinary events. We’ll explore the methods the authors use to pull us into these ordinary lives, and we’ll look at how they turn mundane events into engaging stories.

We’ll look around the room and around our lives, choose an item, a snippet of conversation, or an event, and we’ll mine it for the rich story it holds. Each week, using questions and prompts, we’ll discover something extraordinary about our chosen topics. We’ll build characters, a sense of place, and a plot unique to our topic.

By the end of the course, you will have written a draft of a story and surprised yourself with how much fun you had finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. Anyone who is having trouble starting a story, developing a story, or finding a story is welcome to join us.

July 15 – August 12 6 -8 pm Register Here

Joann Smith’s collection of short stories “A Heaven of Their Choosing” was published by 7.13 Books in September 2021. Her stories have been anthologized and published in many literary journals. When I Was Boudicca, her novel of historical fiction is available online. She holds an MFA in Fine Arts: Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College, and an MA in English from Lehman College, CUNY. She has taught creative writing for many years and mentors writers through the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP). Joann was born, raised, and lives in the Bronx, N.Y.

24, 5:30 – 7:30 P.M in a joint reading with 7.13 Books and Northwestern University’s MFA Program.