Fiction: Magic Realism

Somewhere between realism and fantasy lies the strange, wonderful world of magical realism. This contemporary, global genre, with deep roots in fairy tales, folk tales, the supernatural and the surreal, opens up moments of dreamlike, fantastical possibility In narratives of everyday reality. In this workshop, we’ll experiment with incorporating non-realist elements to give our stories a unique twist. Short in-class readings may include work by Gabriel García Márquez, Franz Kafka, Amy Hempel, Etgar Keret, and Leonora Carrington, among others.

Jared Green is a Pushcart Prize-nominated author, literary critic, and professor of English literature at Stonehill College. His fiction, poetry, and critical writing have appeared in numerous journals, including Colorado Review, Greensboro Review, Gulf Coast, Chicago Review, Phoebe, Subnivean, and The Missouri Review Aud-Cast. He is a recipient of a Gurney Norman Fiction Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Fiddlehead Fiction Prize, the Columbia Journal Fiction Prize, and the Cagibi Macaron Prize. His work has been recognized by the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing with an MVICW Fellowship and by the state of Rhode Island with a Robert and Margaret MacColl Johnson Fellowship. He is the founding director of the Walden Woods Young Writers Workshop.

Please contact Jared at Jared_Green@concordacademy.org with any questions about the Walden Woods Young Writers Workshop.

Nivedhan Singh

Podcasting

Speculative Fiction Workshop: All the Future Can Be

If you project humanity forward 200 years, what do you see? Aliens? Interplanetary travel? Wastelands? What about 2000 years? What are the strangest, darkest, and most wondrous possibilities? This week is all about walking the imagined roads of the future. On the first day, we’ll explore the dual genres of dystopia and utopia, and complete a series of generative exercises that delve into our deepest fears and most radical hopes. On the second day, we’ll explore climate fiction and environmental writing, using sensory prompts to build a compelling vision of our planet’s ecological future. On the final day, we’ll do a collaborative world-building sequence in small groups, because a new world is something we must create together.

Sara Daniele Rivera is a Cuban Peruvian American artist, writer, translator, and educator. Her writing has appeared in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Solstice, Waxwing, The Bat City Review, Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology, and elsewhere. She was the winner of the 2018 Stephen Dunn Prize in Poetry and a 2022 Tin House resident in Speculative Fiction. Her debut book of poetry, The Blue Mimes (Graywolf Press, 2024), was the recipient of the 2023 Academy of American Poets First Book Award. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Abbigail Baldys

Creative Non-Fiction

Poetry Studio: Portals and Panoramas

We will explore the poem as a portal, a passage to anywhere–any door left ajar will be ours to enter as figuratively as we please, with a view to something new and capacious. In practical terms, this will translate to reading and writing poems with in-depth class discussion designed to hone the critical skills and strategies necessary to the poetic craft. This will be a studio class, encouraging and examining student work within a workshop format, but we will also cover a wide range of poetry, contemporary and otherwise, from poets aligned with our explorations and poets who may be opposed.

Topi Dasgupta holds a PhD from Harvard University and an MFA from Boston University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Agni, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Journal of Asian Studies, Rhino, Prism, Off the Coast, Nixes Mate Review, and Main Street Rag. Current projects include a new collection of poems and a translation of an eighteenth-century Sanskrit epic by the Indian pre-modern poet Bharatchandra.  She currently teaches at Concord Academy.

Justin Bull

Screenwriting