Workshop of Pure Critique with Peter Bricklebank (via Zoom on Thursday mornings)

In Pure Critique we range far and wide in our discussions.

Whether writing in a garret, ivory tower, pandemic lockdown or a fever pitch of blind faith, at some point writers need a hothouse workshop environment in which to appraise and develop their work. Each week in Pure Critique, we’ll read and comment on a manuscript from 2-3 class participants (everyone gets to present at least twice) and ask what works, what seems less effective, and why, as well as what one might try.

Participants test chapters or extracts from their novels and memoirs or short stories and essays, or sometimes curious chimeric hybrids as their draft searches for form. What you will find in this class is a forum for ongoing, astute feedback that will help you keep working. We’ll discuss whatever issues of writing may come up—perhaps whether a metaphor works or you even need one, the question of research, the efficacy of dialogue, scene, narrative chronology, diction (is a word like chimeric a good option?), structure, pacing, interiority, humor, thematic intent…. The goal is to help writers engage with craft and move one draft to the next. We encourage each other to be writers, both playful and serious, and thus more engaging in our writing by risking more and digging deeper. Intelligent conversation about your work: pure critique.

This class will take place via Zoom. The link will be sent at the time of registration as well as the day before the class. Please check spam folders and write to ask@writerscenter.org with questions. We can put students with questions about the class in touch with the instructor directly, if needed.

Class will begin on Thursday, January 11 and continue for eight consecutive Thursdays. Class will meet from 9:30 – 11:30 am EST.

Peter Bricklebank has published in The American Voice, Carolina Quarterly, Mid-American Review, Kansas Quarterly, Confrontation, Fiction, The New York Times Book Review and The Chicago Tribune, et al.. His chapter on essay/memoir appears in The Portable MFA. He has taught at New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, and elsewhere, including a year as Nonfiction writer-in-residence at Central Connecticut State University and at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv. Pandemics permitting, he teaches a winter workshop in Oaxaca, Mexico. He currently teaches in the online graduate program of National University and the Hudson Valley Writers Center. His work appears in the latest issue of The Bellevue Literary Review and a podcast of a reading of one of his essays can be found at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-poet-words-in-space/id1528029902.