Matthew Salesses--English professor and bestselling author of The Hundred-Year Flood and The PEN/Faulkner finalist, Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear--takes on these questions in his new national bestseller, Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping. Matthew discusses with Eve and Julie how the format of traditional writing workshops was defined by straight, white, able, cis men; how greater diversity in workshops today necessitates a more mindful and empowered approach to the teaching of writing; and how we, as readers and writers, can break free of the oppressive cycles of privileged assumptions and expectations.
Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping
An NPR Best Book of the Year
An Esquire Best Nonfiction Book of the Year
"Salesses is clearly a generous instructor, willing to share ideas for syllabus design, grading techniques and writing exercises. He brings to this work many years of experience as a writer and professor, along with palpable frustration at what he has witnessed or endured in these roles ... Craft in the Real World is a significant contribution to discussions of the art of fiction and a necessary challenge to received views about whose stories are told, how they are told and for whom they are intended." —Laila Lalami, The New York Times Book Review
"A real eye opener ... It unpacks the seemingly ‘universal’ lessons we learn about what makes fiction good to reveal how whiteness and maleness have shaped those values." —Kumari Devarajan, Code Switch, NPR
Go Deeper
Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity, by Matthew Salesses
