Workshop: (Don't) Spare Me the Details with Laura Warrell
Workshop: (Don't) Spare Me the Details with Laura Warrell
6 Sessions: Wednesdays, February 12, 19, 26, March 5, 12, 19
7:00-9:00pm ET
Laura Warrell
9 students
Laura Warrell is the author of Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, and long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Lit Hub, Los Angeles Review of Books, Huffington Post, and other publications. Laura has attended residencies at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Tin House Writer’s Workshop. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the low-residency MFA program at Pacific University.
The unsung hero of storytelling is, in large part, detail, what writer Francine Prose calls “the building blocks with which a story is put together” and “the clues to something deeper.” Precise, even unexpected, details make stories riveting, characters compelling, and sentences elegant. In this writing lab, we will examine the multitude of ways writers incorporate details into their work and explore techniques for finding details that make stories come alive. During the first four sessions of the course, participants will examine passages from published fiction and creative non-fiction, and complete generative exercises designed to help them use details effectively. During the last two sessions, participants will have the opportunity to share their manuscripts (new or old) with peers for workshop.
Workshop Highlights:
Mine your characters’ psyches and circumstances to unearth the precise details with which to tell their stories
Gain tools to put details on the page that place readers in your character’s world and convey your story’s underlying themes
Generate new, detail-rich material
One full scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Monday, February 3.
Laura Warrell is the author of the novel Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm (Pantheon Books, 2022) a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, and long-listed for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Golden Poppy Book Award through the California Independent Booksellers Alliance. Named a ‘best’ or ‘must-read’ book by Vanity Fair, People, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Apple Books, The Root, The Millions, Hollywood Reporter, Bustle, Today, Debutiful, and elsewhere, the novel was also chosen as a Good Morning America Buzz Pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, and an Indie Next List Pick.
Named a “Writer to Watch” by Publishers Weekly, Laura’s writing has been published in the New York Times, Lit Hub, Los Angeles Review of Books, Huffington Post, The Rumpus, The Writer, and other publications. She has attended residencies at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Tin House Writer’s Workshop where she taught in the online Winter Workshop in 2023. She has taught Creative Writing and Literature through the Emerging Voices program at PEN America Los Angeles, at Writing Workshops Los Angeles, and at the Berklee College of Music and other academic institutions in Los Angeles and Boston.
