Stephanie Barbé Hammer

Magical Realist Fiction

Monday - Tuesday
1:00 – 3:30 PM
TBD

Is your project magical realism or something else? Let’s find out together during this 2-day workshop that delves into how to develop or refine a story or novel with elements of magical realism in mind.

Do you love Kafka, George Saunders, Gogol, Leslie Marmon Silko, Colson Whitehead, Kathleen Alcala, and Aimee Bender? Or have you wondered if techniques of magical realism might invigorate your writing?

We'll invoke those writers to help us play with "lies" and enter the realm of magical realism. This workshop is open to nonfiction writers and poets as well as fiction writers.

We’ll start with a short exercise or two to help us understand what magical realism is, and then we’ll read and give feedback on up to 10 student submissions, as time allows.

Pages for reading:

  • 4-5 double-spaced 12 pt font manuscript pages

  • the beginning of either a novel or a short story (flash fiction included)

  • printed copies for the workshop leader and the others

We’ll go through your pages as a group and comment on what “pops” and what could use development or change.

Along the way we’ll do 1-2 generative writing exercises that you can use as the start of something beautiful.

Bio

Stephanie Barbé Hammer is an award winning novelist, short fiction writer, and poet. Originally from Manhattan Stephanie moved to Southern California in 1986 to teach at the University of California, Riverside and she's lived on the West Coast ever since. Three years ago she and her husband, political organizer Larry Behrendt, moved to Santa Barbara and are still discovering new places to get coffee in town. Stephanie is the author of three novels, one novelette, three poetry collections, and a how to write magical realism craft manual. Stephanie's newest book is The Warbler School Chronicles, a mini-collection of eleven magical realist stories about a strange, perpetually freezing private girls school in NYC. 

Favorite novelists:

Stephanie likes the work of Haruki Murakami, Aimee Bender, Bernadine Evaristo, the Brothers Grimm, ETA Hoffmann, Albert Camus, China Mieville, and Kathleen Alcalá.

Recent favorite novels include:

The City and The City, Authority, Gabrielle, Killer Angels