Reading Like a Writer with Jennifer Solheim

Writers read. It’s a platitude: we all know this. But how do you look at a text you admire for its craft elements?

From grammar and syntax to sense and clarity, voice, mood, and tone to character and metaphor—as well as narrative strategies—it can be helpful to understand how to analyze a literary text for these elements to use in turn in your own writing. Working in both full group discussion and breakout rooms, we’ll read Amy Hempel, Jamaica Kincaid, Edward P Jones and Leila Slimani, and consider how our analyses might inform drafting and revision of our own work.

Learning objectives: Drawing from the French tradition of explication de texte (textual analysis), this class will show you how to read for writing craft, as well as work through exercises for drafting and revision based on this close reading technique.