Writing Co-Lab

In this generative class, we will discuss how fairy tales can be sources of plot, symbols, and narrative shapes, outside of retelling. We will read short fairy tales and work inspired by fairy tales, spend time free-writing and generating ideas for new stories and novels. We will touch on the work of Kate Bernheimer, Michael Cunningham, Anne Sexton, among others. Students are asked to pick a favorite or new to them fairy tale to bring to class. The tale will be used to begin a new story. In the forest, we can encounter a stranger, or something left behind. Behind every tree is a story.

We will discuss Kate Bernheimer’s essay Fairy Tale is Form, Form is Fairy Tale, in which she lays out the traditional elements of the fairy tale. How can we use these elements to write our own fairy tales, more fleshed-out stories, or find the shape of the novels we dream of writing? A pair of shoes, a coat, a little girl and her lamb, a cooking pot: in fairy tales objects, people, and animals hold tremendous symbolic power. An object in a fairy tale can grow into the driving force of a longer, more detailed work of fiction.

About the Instructor

Richard Mirabella is a writer and civil servant living in upstate New York. His short stories have appeared in Story Magazine, swamp pink, American Short Fiction, wigleaf, and elsewhere. His first novel, Brother & Sister Enter the Forest was a New York Times Editor’s Choice, named a best book of the year by Harper’s Bazaar, and has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.