Instructor:
Kevin Brockmeier is the author of the novels The Illumination, The Brief History of the Dead, and The Truth About Celia; the story collections Things That Fall from the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer; the children’s novels City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery; a memoir of his seventh-grade year called A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip; and, most recently, a collection of flash fiction called The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories. His work has been translated into eighteen languages. He teaches frequently at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and he lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was raised.
Course Description:
Orson Scott Card said that "there are a thousand right ways to tell a story, and ten million wrong ones, and you’re a lot more likely to find one of the latter than the former your first time through the tale." Our goal for this course will be to read each other's stories and to help each other, as writers, find one of the thousand right ways to tell them. Whether you regard yourself as a genre fiction writer, a mainstream fiction writer, a realist, a fantasist, or something else altogether, as long as you arrive in Paris with an interest in improving your work and making discoveries, our workshop will offer a welcome environment for you.
We will devote roughly an hour to discussing each student’s manuscript, drawing the writer’s attention to its virtues, flaws, delights, confusions, lulls, and enticements. It's likely that we’ll also read a handful of published stories by masters of the form, authors who approach their work with vision, craft, and a complex and absorbing sense of what it means to be alive, with the goal of examining their stories for whatever creative lessons they might offer us. For writers of all levels.
Preparation:
I’ll ask each of you to submit a single double-spaced short story, between 10 and 25 pages long, by 1 May 2026 to admin.pww@wice-paris.org. Please include your masterclass name along with your materials. Your classmates and I will read your manuscript in advance of our week together, prepare a letter for you, and come to the table prepared to discuss our observations in detail.
Agent Consultations:
Available exclusively to participants who have enrolled in a masterclass, you can register for one or two agent consultations for an additional fee. More information to come.
Cancellation Policy:
- Full refund through 15 April 2026 minus 100€ admin fee
- Half refund through 30 April 2026 minus 100€ admin fee
- Sorry, no refund possible after 30 April 2026
In the event of unforeseen circumstances, PWW reserves the right to replace an instructor.
Photo credit: © Benjamin Krain
