Anthony Varallo

Biography

Anthony Varallo is the author of What Did You Do Today?, winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction, forthcoming from the University of North Texas Press in Fall 2023. His other books include a novel, The Lines (University of Iowa Press), as well as four previous short story collections: This Day in History, winner of the John Simmons Short Fiction Award; Out Loud, winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize; Think of Me and I’ll Know (Northwestern University Press); and Everyone Was There, winner of the Elixir Press Fiction Award. He is a professor of English at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC, where he directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing and serves as fiction editor of swamp pink literary journal.

Events

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Digging In, Sending Out: A Fiction and Editing Workshop

When
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Presenters
Event status
Scheduled
Attendance Required
No
Description
Do you have a story you’ve been sending out for a while that keeps getting rejected? Even as you revise it, here and there, hopeful it will find a home at last? What keeps the editors from saying yes? Is there something about your story—that story you’ve re-read a zillion times, so often that you’ve practically got it memorized by now—that you aren’t able to see? What is it? How might you address it in your next draft? In this weeklong workshop, we will explore what it means to “dig in” when drafting and revising our stories, from sentence-level concerns (we’ll identify those “weasel words” that show up again and again without our notice) to larger considerations, like character motivation, verisimilitude, plausibility, psychological depth, and complexity. We will also explore the submission process from an editor’s perspective, reading sample published stories with a behind-the-scenes look at why those stories were selected for publication. Our goal will be to demystify the submission process while developing greater appreciation for the connection between drafts that “dig in” before they are sent out into the world. Read more...
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Flash Fiction Five Hundred: A Writer's Workout

When
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Presenters
Event status
Scheduled
Attendance Required
No
Description
Ready to write stories you had no idea you’d ever write, explore subjects you never thought you’d explore, take risks, experiment, and surprise yourself in the process? Ready to write a lot? This class will be more of a fiction workout than workshop (although we’ll do a bit of that, too) that will challenge you to write a complete, 300-500-word flash fiction by the end of the weekend, one that is ready to go out into the world. How will we do that? By thinking of our writing as an exercise. An exercise in dialogue, tone, imagery, point-of-view, setting, characterization—you name it, just don’t call it a “story” quite yet. That comes later. Together we will explore the world of flash fiction (stories of 500 words or fewer) through discussion of published examples and through multiple writing exercises that will break you out of your comfort zone. We’ll roll up our sleeves together and think of art as exercise. Whether you have a dozen story ideas in mind or none whatsoever, you will leave this class with a greater appreciation of the flash form. Read more...
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