F183. Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Organizing and Structuring Story Collections

Archives, Marriott Marquis, Meeting Level Four
Friday, February 10, 2017
12:00 pm to 1:15 pm

 

Putting together a story collection can feel like assembling a jigsaw puzzle in which the pieces don’t quite fit and there is no one solution. Must the stories be interconnected or thematically connected? Can stories be linked by virtue of voice, tone, or style? How much does the marketplace influence the writer's approach? The panel presents writers of interconnected, thematically connected, and unconnected stories to provide insight for story writers seeking to build their collections.


Participants

Moderator:

Siân Griffiths directs the creative writing program at Weber State University. Her creative work is published in Georgia Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Redivider, and other journals. Her novel Borrowed Horses was a semi-finalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her website is sbgriffiths.com.

Benjamin Hale is the author of the novel The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore and the story collection The Fat Artist. He has taught at Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and he currently teaches at Bard College.

Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of the story collection Safe as Houses and the novel 2 A.M. at the Cat’s Pajamas. She lives in Brooklyn, where she teaches at NYU and in the low-residency MFA program at the Institute for American Indian Arts. Her website is www.mariehelenebertino.com.

Michael Martone teaches writing at the university in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes himself as well, mostly about himself, Indiana, and being born there, and about writing and writing about writing.

Julia Elliott’s fiction has appeared in Tin House, Conjunctions, Pushcart Prize, and Best American Short Stories. She won a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award. Her book The Wilds was listed by Kirkus, BuzzFeed, Book Riot, and Electric Lit as a Best Book of the Year and was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice.

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February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center