Literary Fiction

All posts in the Literary Fiction category

THIS SUNDAY: Free Online Writers Studio Reading

Published April 22, 2023 by Philip Ivory

Join the Writers Studio Reading Series on Sunday, April 23 at 5 pm ET / 2 pm PT for a reading of original work from our faculty.

During this virtual reading, teachers from our New York City, Tucson, San Francisco, and Rome branches will share their poetry and fiction.

I’m excited to be representing Tucson with a new piece, reading alongside talented colleagues including Lorraine L. Babb, Lisa Bass, Stas Gawronski, Kathie Jacobson, and Sally McElwain.

The reading is free. CLICK HERE to register in advance. We hope to see you there.

APRIL CLASS: Online Writing About Childhood

Published April 9, 2023 by Philip Ivory

Starting Saturday April 29, I’ll be teaching another session of my special six-week class Online Writing About Childhood through The Writers Studio.

Your personal memories of growing up can be a treasure trove of ideas for stories and poems and memoir pieces. This class will show you techniques to manage your personal material and bring it to life. (NOTE: For those who have already taken this class, I’m working on creating a “sequel” class with all new exercises that I hope will be ready by summer.)

In this class, we examine techniques and voices crafted by celebrated writers of poetry and prose such as Sandra Cisneros, Seamus Heaney, and Ray Bradbury. How did they use imagination and memory to regain a foothold in childhood’s not-so-distant realm, conjuring its wonder, joy, and pain?

Whether working in poetry, prose, or creative nonfiction, can we apply similar voices and techniques to our own unique material? Let’s bring the world and experience of childhood to vibrant life again through our creative work.

For more information, CLICK HERE. Hope to see you in class!

UPCOMING CLASS: Online Writing About Childhood

Published January 3, 2023 by Philip Ivory

Starting January 28, I’ll be teaching a new session of my six-week class, Online Writing About Childhood.

CLICK HERE to register.

CLASS DESCRIPTION: Childhood from the perspective of an adult writer can seem like “another country,” a strange land where our powers, responsibilities and perceptions were vastly different. And yet it is the place we all come from. And while the lens through which we viewed the world as children may have seemed innocent and magical, our sensibilities were always vulnerable to the hard truths of encroaching adulthood.

In this class, we will examine techniques and voices crafted by celebrated writers of poetry and prose such as Sandra Cisneros, Seamus Heaney, and Ray Bradbury. How did they use imagination and memory to regain a foothold in childhood’s not-so-distant realm, conjuring its wonder, joy, and pain? Whether working in poetry, prose, or creative nonfiction, can we apply similar voices and techniques to our own unique material? Let’s bring the world and experience of childhood to vibrant life again through our creative work.

This class is open to all writers of poetry and prose, including new and returning Writers Studio students. Each week, students write a two-page exercise based on the week’s model. Then, during a two-hour, live Google Meet session, students present their work and receive feedback from their fellow classmates and from the teacher. The last fifteen minutes of the class are spent reading and discussing the following week’s model, using the Writers Studio method of analyzing persona and narrative technique. The Google Meet sessions are not recorded.

Sign up soon before the class fills up.

THE SWAMP RAT: New fiction published

Published November 19, 2021 by Philip Ivory

“Man towers above the rest of creation so long as he realizes his own nature, and when he forgets it, he sinks lower than the beasts.”
— Boethius

It’s been a while since I had any short fiction published, since I’ve been devoting myself to finishing a novel. But here’s a story I wrote about three years ago which has finally found a home. It’s called The Swamp Rat.

The story arose from a flash fiction contest I participated in through NYC Midnight in 2018. While the story didn’t win, I thought it was worth developing, and expanded it from 1000 words to a fully-fleshed 7000 word story.

It’s set in Paris during the 1930s, and is a bit of homage to the style of early spy/mystery stories by such writers as W. Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene.

I’m excited that the story has found a home at The Chamber, an online journal of dark fiction. My thanks to the publishers.

READ IT HERE. But don’t let that stop you from enjoying the whole issue.

My thanks also to friends who helped me in the development of this story, including Reneé Bibby, Alice Hatcher, Frances Lynch and my fellow students in the Tucson Writers Studio Master Class, who gave me excellent feedback.

I hope you’ll let me know what you thought of the story by leaving a comment, either here or on The Chamber site. Thanks!

UNREAL event at Antigone: Thanks for Support

Published October 21, 2019 by Philip Ivory

Thanks to our students and friends who came out to support our special event last Friday, Oct. 18!

Lela Scott MacNeil

Our teachers at The Writers Studio Tucson had a chance to read from their creative work at a public reading held at Antigone Books on Fourth Avenue here in Tucson.

Richard Leis

It was called UNREAL, and gave our teachers, Lela Scott MacNeil, Richard Leis, Donna Aversa, Reneé Bibby and myself a chance to read selections of poetry and prose that focus on the unusual, the dark, and the unreal.

 

Donna Aversa

This was the program:

Lela Scott MacNeil / reading novel excerpt, Long Night’s Journey Into Day
Phil Ivory / reading flash fiction, Probably Last Meeting of Bluebell Ridge II Homeowners Association
Richard Leis / reading poems, [Aliens are here], Phantom Taste of Apricot on My Tongue, Cities Through Telescopes, City as Fairy Tale, and Burning Baby
Donna Aversa / reading flash fiction, A Little Bit Of Sausage
Reneé Bibby / reading short story excerpt, That Boy

Reneé Bibby

We had a great turnout who came to hear our work and browse at Tucson’s most celebrated independent bookstore.

Phil Ivory

Many thanks to Antigone Books for being such a gracious and enthusiastic host, and making us and our guests feel at home. We’re looking forward to more events like it.

 

 

UNREAL: Writers Studio Teachers Read Their Work

Published October 4, 2019 by Philip Ivory

Join us on Oct. 18 for a public reading event, cohosted by Antigone Books and The Writers Studio. Teachers from the Tucson branch of The Writers Studio — Lela Scott MacNeil, Richard Leis, Donna Aversa, Reneé Bibby and myself — will read selections of poetry and prose that focus on the unusual, the dark, and the unreal.

WHERE: Antigone Books, 411 N 4th Ave, Tucson, Arizona 85705

WHEN: October 18, 2019 at 6:00 PM

No RSVP or admission fee is required.

At The Writers Studio Tucson, we pride ourselves on being active participants in Tucson’s thriving literary community. Please join us, and patronize Antigone Books, one of the finest independent bookstores in the country. Visit their web site and sign up for their newsletter.

The Writers Studio, founded by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Schultz in 1987, offers writing workshops designed to help students discover and nurture their own voices. The Writers Studio Tucson offers four levels of classes to help students achieve their writing goals.

For more information on The Writers Studio, click here. 

When Reality Doesn’t Cut It, UNREAL Is Our Best Friend!

See you on Oct. 18!

 

WHAT TERRIBLE BOOK? Answer Revealed

Published September 27, 2019 by Philip Ivory

So a few days ago, I posed the question: Which book is being reviewed here by the editor of The London Sunday Express?

” … the most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature … All the secret sewers of vice are canalized in its flood of unimaginable thoughts, images and pornographic words. And its unclean lunacies are larded with appalling and revolting blasphemies directed against the Christian religion and against the name of Christ — blasphemies hitherto associated with the most degraded orgies of Satanism and the Black Mass.”

That was a contemporary 1920s review of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

I came across that remarkable quote in the current (9/26/19) issue of The New York Review of Books. It reminds us that Ulysses, which among its other preoccupations details a variety of human sexual and excretory functions, repulsed many early readers, including Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw, W. B. Yeats and even D.H. Lawrence. Lawrence, who celebrated lusty behavior in his own work, labeled Molly Bloom’s famous concluding soliloquy “the dirtiest,  most indecent, obscene thing ever written.” Other early readers such as T.S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway hailed the book as a masterpiece.

Take a look at “Ulysses on Trial,” The New York Review of Books‘ fascinating account of how publisher Bennet Cerf and ACLU lawyer Morris Ernst waged a brilliant and ultimately successful campaign to help Ulysses navigate its way around anti-obscenity laws so that Joyce’s master work could be published in the United States.

 

WHAT TERRIBLE BOOK IS THIS?

Published September 24, 2019 by Philip Ivory

Which book is being reviewed here by the editor of the London Sunday Express?

” … the most infamously obscene book in ancient or modern literature … All the secret sewers of vice are canalized in its flood of unimaginable thoughts, images and pornographic words. And its unclean lunacies are larded with appalling and revolting blasphemies directed against the Christian religion and against the name of Christ — blasphemies hitherto associated with the most degraded orgies of Satanism and the Black Mass.”

I’ll post the answer in a few days.