Each session includes required reading, a written lecture, creative exercises to further your learning, and a writing assignment to turn in for personalized feedback from your instructor.
Session One: Getting Started
Session Two: Real-life Characters
Session Three: Making Your Point—Logically
Session Four: Style, Part I—Unity & Rhythm
Session Five: Style, Part II—Voice & Tone
Session Six: Polishing Your Prose
What will you learn?
Who should attend?
Required Reading
Student Testimonials
Meet the instructor
Mark Spencer
Mark Spencer is the author of the novels An Untimely Frost, Ghost Walking, The Masked Demon, The Weary Motel (Omaha Prize for the Novel, Faulkner Award for the Novel), and Love and Reruns in Adams County; the best-selling nonfiction novel A Haunted Love Story: the Ghosts of the Allen House; as well as the short-story collections Wedlock, Spying on Lovers (Bradshaw Book Award), and Trespassers.
His short stories and articles have appeared in a wide variety of national and international magazines. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize eight times and has received four Special Mentions in Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses. He also won the St. Andrews Press Short Fiction Prize. Trespassers, Mark’s most recent short-story collection, was a finalist in four national book competitions: the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award, the G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, the A.E. Coppard Long Fiction Prize, and the Quarterly West Novella Competition.
After earning his B.A. in English Literature at the University of Cincinnati, Mark earned his M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Bowling Green State University and did Ph.D. work at Oklahoma State University.
Mark is a professor of English and Creative Writing in the MFA program and Associate Vice Chancellor in Academic Affairs at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. Several times, Mark has been named to Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers.
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