The Wildness and Carefulness of Writing a Novel with Moriel Rothman-Zecher

3-Day Workshop
Wednesday – Friday, May 8 – 10 | 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

In order to create a new universe — i.e., a novel — a writer needs a sense of recklessness, boldness, imagination, and wildness. But in order to tame this universe, to sharpen its logics, and to make enough sense out of its rhythms to tell a compelling story, a writer needs discipline, methodology, grit, and carefulness.

In this workshop, we will explore the contradictory and complementary ideas of wildness and carefulness in novel writing, through select in-class readings, writing exercises, craft discussions and more. Participants in this workshop will gain access to both artistic inspiration and practical tools as you set out to create —or to delve deeper into— the universes of your first (or next) novels.

Moriel Rothman-Zecher is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, and the recipient of a 2017 MacDowell Colony Fellowship in Literature. Born in Jerusalem, he is the author of the novel Sadness Is a White Bird (February 2018, Atria Books / Simon and Schuster), which won the 2018 Books by the Banks Author Award for Best Adult Fiction, received starred pre-publication reviews from Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal, and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. His writing has been published in The New York Times, The Paris Review’s “The Daily,” Electric Literature, Haaretz, ZYZZYVA, The Common, and elsewhere. He lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with his wife, Kayla, and their daughter, Nahar, and their dog, Silly Department. He is currently training for his fifth ultramarathon, and working on his second novel. Read more at TheLefternWall.com and follow him on Twitter @Moriel_RZ.