Beginnings: A Seminar for Fiction and Creative Nonfiction is a 6-week-long workshop with award-winning novelist, Hannah Assadi. The class will take place on Zoom on Saturdays from May 4 until June 8 from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. PST. Each participant will be able to submit one (1) piece of writing for workshop and receive written feedback by the instructor.
Beginnings—Readers are either won or lost within the first few pages of a book. Most literary agents and editors won’t read past the beginning of a manuscript if they are not seduced by its early movements. In this workshop, we will focus our attention on polishing the beginnings of our manuscripts, whether the first short story in a collection or the first chapter in a novel or memoir. In addition to reading and discussing peer work in this workshop setting, we will also collectively examine great openings in literature.
Hannah Lillith Assadi, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, is the author of Sonora, which received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Her second novel, The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, was a New Yorker and NPR best book of 2022. She teaches fiction at the Columbia University School of the Arts and the Pratt Institute.
This workshop is $480. For more information, please contact Lindsay Wright at workshops@lareviewofbooks.org.