Fictions of the Wreckage

UG - Undergraduate

Vampires, killer robots, zombies, oh my! The genre that we call speculative fiction can involve a lot of wild and dystopian premises that draw upon the imagination of the real to construct an original world. In this time of constant global emergency and crisis, and where apocalypse is no longer myth but a true reality, how do we write the fictions of wreckage when the end of time is not of the distant future but taking place right now? In this fiction workshop, students will read and examine different examples of the world's end and write their own stories that envision the past, future, and every urgent present. On the craft level, students will work with the forms of flash fiction and short story, and hone various elements of world building that include finetuning the rules of a story's speculative premise, character development, and plot development. Together, our stories will create a tapestry of answers to the questions: What, in fact, does it take to survive the end of the world? And what stories might emerge from the dredge and debris?