“Tell It Slant” Workshop Reading Material: Week 3 + Week 4

I’m excited to be working with some of the writers from the Hampden Writer’s Group over the next few weeks. The title of the workshop is “Tell It Slant: Real Life as Raw Material for Good Fiction.” We’ll be generating a lot of new material together, but we’ll also be reading exemplary texts. Here’s what we’ll discuss in the next couple of sessions:

For this evening (11/3):

• “Parents’ Morning Epiphany” and “Blocked” by Zadie Smith (from Grand Union [stories])
• “Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction” by Zadie Smith (from New York Review of Books)

For next week (11/10):

• “All Aunt Hagar’s Children” by Edward P. Jones (from All Aunt Hagar’s Children [stories])