Prose Workshop: A Cross-Sectional Workshop
Week 8 | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Prose Room | Ages 18+
Participants in the workshop will, instead of looking at one complete story one at a time, look all the stories in the workshop at the same time. This will be done by focusing on various parts of the stories—titles, first lines, first paragraphs, first pages, middles, endings etc. considering both the specific part before us in the work and what that part is or does or means generally. To that end, there will not be a gag rule. Every author will be encouraged to speak on their work, the work of the other writers in the room, and how they think about these various parts of composition. This workshop will be about the process of writing rather than about the product of the writing. Writing will be considered as a series of problems the writer sets for oneself and the tactics and strategies employed to solve those challenges. Flexible. (Ages 18+)
Class Times
Michael Martone’s newest books are Plain Air: Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana (2022) and The Complete Writings of Art Smith, The Bird Boy of Fort Wayne (2020). He has authored or edited over two dozen editions including recent books The Moon Over Wapakoneta (2018); Brooding (2018); Memoranda (2015); Winesburg, Indiana; and Double-wide (2007), his collected early stories. His memoir Michael Martone (2005) is writing in contributor’s notes like this one. In 2000, The Flatness and Other Landscapes won the AWP Award for Nonfiction. His stories and essays have appeared in over 100 magazines and journals and have been featured or cited in Best American Stories, Best American Essays, and the Pushcart Prize.
He has won two Fellowships from the NEA and a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation. In 2013 he received the national Indiana Authors Award, in 2016, the Mark Twain Award for Distinguished Contribution to Midwestern Literature, and in the spring of 2023 was awarded the Truman Capote Award by the Monroeville Literary Festival.
He retired as Professor at the University of Alabama, having taught creative writing classes there since 1996. He taught creative writing for 40 years, also teaching at Iowa State, Harvard, Syracuse Universities and Warren Wilson College.
