S175.
Wrangling the Beast: Playing with Structure in the First Novel
Saturday, March 26, 2022
12:10 pm to 1:10 pm
One of the most difficult challenges first-time novelists face is figuring out the structure of their stories, yet is structure imposed on story, or does it arise organically from it? The novels we admire most have not just married form to plot but found ways to make the form itself iterate what matters most. In this panel, award-winning fiction writers engaged in first-novel work will discuss their processes, struggles, strategies, and overall journeys through structuring their first novels.
Participants
Joy Baglio's fiction appears in Tin House, American Short Fiction, the Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, Bread Loaf, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center and is the founder of Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop.
Emma Komlos-Hrobsky is associate editor at Poets & Writers magazine. She has also served as an editor at Tin House books and magazine and a professor at The New School. Her writing appears in Guernica, Conjunctions, Tin House, Hunger Mountain, Bookforum, and other publications.
Swati Khurana is a writer, artist, tarot reader, and aspiring podcast creator. Swati edits flash fiction at Asian American Writers Workshop's The Margins and received fellowships from NYFA, Center for Fiction, Kundiman, and Vermont Studio Center.
Raluca Albu is a Romanian-born, Bronx-raised writer and translator whose fiction plays with form and explores the creative possibilities of historical archives. She is the online literature editor for BOMB Magazine, a writing lecturer at NYU, and a recent Center for Fiction fellow.
