Class Description
“When Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams one morning, he found that he had been transformed in his bed into an enormous bug.” So begins Franz Kafka’s famous novella, The Metamorphosis, which is yes, about a man turning into a giant insect, but is also about a alienation and familial obligation – themes that are more familiar to us. Incorporating the abnormal into your fiction can be a wonderful way to expand the rules of an imaginary world, but how do writers do this without completely jumping into the realm of fantasy?
By studying the masters of magical realism-- like Franz Kafka, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Italo Calvino and Toni Morrison, among others-- we will learn how they believably envelop the strange without sacrificing story or alienating their readers. We will then take what we’ve learned and work on exercises that stretch our imagination and help us find a way to seamlessly blend the strange with the real.
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. After registering, a yellow Resources tab will appear in this section containing a link to join class. Please note that you will need to be logged into view the Resources tab.
Zoom Participation:
In our experience, the intimate nature of a writing workshop benefits from on-camera participation. Students are of course welcome to turn their camera off whenever they need to, but it is a community norm for cameras to be on most of the time. You can learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
You can enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to access the transcript after class, please make sure to let your instructor ahead of time that you'd like a copy.