Jenny Bitner

TUESDAYS, Oct. 22nd - Dec. 3rd*| Branching out from the roots of magical realism, horror, and fantasy, fabulist writing—exemplified by authors like Carmen Maria Machado, and Kelly Link—has captivated today's literary imagination. Speculative fiction, slipstream, fabulist—there are many names for writing that blends the imaginary and the real, giving equal weight to ghosts and relationship problems. But why is it that the stranger and the weirder the tale, the more it resonates with us on a deeply personal level? Could it be because we are not rational creatures? 

Writers like George Saunders, Toni Morrison, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez use elements of the magical, the surreal, and the real to weave their layered tales. We will read and study their work and also look at feminist authors like Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler who have also experimented with this form to tell tales of dark imagination and subversion. 

In this class, we will focus on different elements of craft in fabulist stories and how we can use them to write our own stories. How do we build a magical world? How can we use imaginative elements to elicit strong emotion in readers? How can fabulism be used to talk about issues of race, power, and class? There will be weekly writing assignments, and you will have a chance to share shorter writing prompts and discuss a full story or chapter in the writing workshop. Open to writers wanting to experiment with new forms or experienced writers.

*Please note - there is no class Nov. 12th.

Asynchronous learning materials for this class will be available online (via the Wet Ink platform). Scheduled class sessions will take place via Zoom. Registered students, please contact the instructor directly for Zoom details. Instructor contact details can be found in the order confirmation email.

Jenny Bitner’s fiction and poetry has been published in Mississippi Review, The Fabulist, The Sun, Fence, Corium, Fourteen Hills, Mid-American Review, and PANK. Pine Press published a chapbook of her poetry entitled Mother. Her story “The Pamphleteer” was published in Best American Nonrequired Reading. She earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Virginia. She is also a certified hypnotherapist and teaches classes combining hypnosis and writing. Her novel Here Is A Game We Could Play was published in 2021 from Acre Books.