Year of Your Book: Fiction with Jonathan Vatner, fall session (via Zoom)

How long have you been planning on writing a book—or finishing the book you started? Let 2024 be the year you do it! Whether you have a partial draft of a novel, memoir, or linked story collection, or just an idea and the desire to write, this class can help you move that “book in your head” onto the page. We will commit to a sustainable writing schedule, craft outlines and discuss structure, and address the mechanics of fiction during in-depth, sensitive critiques of your work. Each student can workshop three excerpts over the 12 weeks. We will use “The Half-Known World” by Robert Boswell as a textbook, discussing it chapter by chapter. Generative exercises will challenge you to experiment with new voices and forms, and our community of writers will help you stick to your goals. With steady effort, you can finish that first draft by this time next year.

Jonathan Vatner is the author of The Bridesmaids Union (St. Martin’s Press, 2022) and Carnegie Hill (Thomas Dunne Books, 2019). His novels have earned praise from People, Town & Country, The New York Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the managing editor of Hue, the magazine of the Fashion Institute of Technology, and teaches fiction writing at New York University. He lives in Yonkers, NY, with his husband and cats.