Electric Literature is accepting applications for its first-ever writing workshop, led by Executive Director and Founding Editor of Recommended Reading Halimah Marcus.

This intimate six-week workshop will be held from 6 – 8 PM on Tuesdays beginning November 12 through December 17, 2024 in Kingston, NY. The cohort is limited to 12 participants, with two writers workshopped per class (each student will be workshopped once). The class will also discuss a selection of iconic and influential short stories, as time allows.

For more information visit electricliterature.com/events/

QUALIFICATIONS

This workshop is designed to accommodate writers over 21 years of age of various experience levels, who want constructive feedback on a specific piece of work, aim to improve their writing skills, and want to find a local writing community. There are no educational, publication, or experiential requirements. Writers will be selected based on the quality of their writing samples and the degree to which their work demonstrates an understanding of craft concepts such as perspective, voice, narrative structure, scene, and dialogue. However, there is no such thing as “mastering” even the basics. Every writer has something to learn, and the workshop will use published as well as student work to explore the building blocks of effective writing.

PEDAGOGY

As an author with 12 years of experience leading one of the country’s most prestigious literary magazines, Halimah Marcus has worked on both sides of the desk: as an editor and gatekeeper, and as a writer awaiting an acceptance, or just a bit of encouragement. She brings a unique dual perspective to the workshop environment, encouraging students to develop and harmonize the two beasts within them: the writer and the editor.

Part of becoming a better writer is developing editorial acumen; if you are able to strategically, precisely, and empathetically edit others’ work, you will be better positioned to edit yourself. Writing is a solitary, sometimes isolating activity, but editing is collaborative. During critiques, students will be asked to provide feedback intended to help the author realize their vision for the story—not to share how they would have written the story themselves. The goal is to channel the author—like a ventriloquist or a medium—rather than change them. During workshops, authors will introduce their submission and will be encouraged to ask questions throughout. Authors will be discouraged from explaining their work once the critique begins, but they will be free to correct misunderstandings that might lead to unproductive lines of discussion. There will also be time allocated for brainstorming, as generating new ideas is an important part of the revision process.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Halimah Marcus has been a fiction editor since 2012, when she co-founded Electric Literature’s weekly fiction series, Recommended Reading. Over the last decade, she has edited hundreds of writers, including AM Homes, Weike Wang, Sheila Heti, Helen DeWitt, James Hannaham, Laura Van Berg, Jim Shepard, Charles Yu, Etgar Keret, Ben Marcus, Nathan Harris, Clare Sestanovich, Emma Eisenberg, and Catherine Lacey, as well as many other established and emerging writers. Stories she has edited have gone on to be included in Best American Short Stories, Best American Mysteries and Suspense, Best Australian Stories, the O. Henry Prize Anthology, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology.

Halimah is also the editor of Horse Girls (Harper Perennial, 2021), an essay anthology that reclaims and recasts the horse girl stereotype, which was a New York Times “New and Noteworthy” pick, featuring T Kira Madden, Jane Smiley, Courtney Maum, Maggie Shipstead, and Carmen Maria Machado. Her own writing has been supported by Yaddo, and her short stories have appeared in Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, One Story, BOMB, The Literary Review, and elsewhere. Andrew Sean Greer selected her short story, “The Party Goers,” from the The Southampton Review as a distinguished story in Best American Short Stories 2022. Halimah has an MFA from Brooklyn College, and lives in Kingston, New York.