Talking in Code: Dialog and Subtext in Fiction (Zoom)

That’s how I began to understand that you don’t talk just to talk, to say “I did this, I did that, I ate and drank,” but you talk to find an idea, to learn how the world works. I’d never thought of it before. –Cesar Pavese

The difficult task of representing speech in literature is usually addressed in creative writing classes by two methods: eavesdropping on and transcribing conversations overheard in public, and crystalizing wordy dialog into more poetic and succinct forms. However, these techniques only scratch the surface of what we can learn and theorize about dialog in fiction. In this 2-hour intensive, we will explore several unique approaches to writing dialogue, do generative in-class writing exercises together, and close-read texts by Francine Prose, Ursula K. Le Guin, Elena Ferrante, Julio Cortázar, and Gary Indiana.

Austyn Wohlers was born in Atlanta in 1996. Her debut novel Hothouse Bloom, called “the rare kind of debut that resets the bar for the field at large” by Blake Butler, will be published by Hub City Press on August 26, 2025. Her fiction, poetry, translations, and essays have been featured in The Baffler, Guernica, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. She is also a musician, releasing music alone and with the band Tomato Flower.