Summer Feast: Dinner Table Scenes and Stories with Nina Semczuk (Zoom)

Some of the most iconic scenes and stories in literature (and visual media) use the dining table as a wonderfully fraught container for drama. Using the tools of craft, we’ll dig into examples to examine character, setting, plot, emotion, syntax, diction, and more, discovering together the ingredients of a five-star mealtime scene. You’ll learn what may most be to your taste, and for the final hour of class, begin working on character sketches and a scene (or story) of your own, following a series of prompts. This analytical and generative workshop is suitable for writers of all levels and genres.  

BIO: Nina Semczuk is a Ukrainian American writer whose work has appeared in Post Road, The Common, the Los Angeles Review, The Offing, and other publications. She has received support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writers, Craigardan, the Salty Quill, and Elsewhere Studios. Nina has served as an editor of the Washington Square Review, Writers Foundry Review, and as a fiction reader for The Rumpus. She was a Brodey/Stein fellow at NYU where she earned her MFA and taught creative writing. Nina has also served as a writing instructor at St. Joseph’s University, Voices From War, and The Loft Literary Center. When she’s not writing, editing, or teaching, she’s outside or at the pottery studio. She lives in Peekskill, NY.