Last Fall, writer Morgan Talty taught a PJ Seminar for us titled “A Master Class on the Heart of Fiction.” Writers who took Morgan’s class were delighted. “Morgan was great—funny, personable, smart, inviting, friendly. I liked his openness about the writing process, teaching process, and thoughts on the readings,” said one writer. Another writer said: “ I really liked listening to his reflections about what makes stories work and how to develop characters.”
Morgan is back with us this summer, teaching the online Fiction workshop for StoryBoard 2025. His class is titled “Harmony: Understanding the Six Commandments of Storytelling.”
What are these six commandments? Well, you’ll have to apply to Morgan’s workshop to find out. But here’s a little more about what you’ll learn: In addition to engaging deeply and meaningfully with each other’s writing, we will discuss what I have come to think of as the six elements chiseled above all storytelling—Voice, Point of View, Character, Plot, Setting (imagery/specificity), and Theme. Like words carved into stone above a passageway—architrave, lintel, or tympanum—these elements mark the threshold every story must cross. But nothing is etched in stone without friction, without force, without the breaking away of something else.
Morgan is the author of one novel, the 2024 hit Fire Exit, and one critically lauded a multi-prize-winning short story collection, Night of the Living Rez. His writing has appeared in Granta, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative Magazine, LitHub, and elsewhere. A winner of the 2021 Narrative Prize, Talty’s work has been supported by the Elizabeth George Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts (2022). Talty is an Assistant Professor of English in Creative Writing and Native American and Contemporary Literature at the University of Maine, Orono, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in creative writing as well as the Institute of American Indian Arts. Talty is also a Prose Editor at The Massachusetts Review. He lives in Levant, Maine.
