OSL Course: Creative Writing – Activist Approaches to Fiction Writing

Dates: 3, 10 and 17 April + 8 and 15 May 2025 (15:00-17:00)
Venue: University of Groningen, exact location t.b.c.
Organizer: Dr Suzanne Manizza-Roszak (University of Groningen). 5 ECs
Open to: PhDs and RMA students; OSL members have first access
Credits: 5ECs. NB: Credits can only be awarded to humanities ReMA and PhD students from Dutch universities

Registration: VIA THIS LINK (registration will open 17 February 2025)

This course will introduce students to a range of very contemporary flash fiction and short stories while inviting students to develop their own fiction writing practice. Participants will read recent short fiction from the small-press literary scene that does urgently important activist work using a variety of formal strategies and genre engagements, from stories that use epistolary structures, employ translanguaging, or borrow from the conventions of scientific or social media writing to pieces that present fresh takes on speculative, dystopian, and gothic narrative. Treating these works as mentor texts, students will produce their own flash fiction and short stories throughout the block, with a special eye toward the task of producing both politically engaged and aesthetically resonant writing.

Every seminar meeting will include a workshop component, with students presenting drafts for peer feedback. A polished, revised version of each piece will then be submitted at the end of the course. A final reflective meta-writing assignment will create space for student authors to consider how their thematic preoccupations and artistic choices connect to the course readings and to the larger body of contemporary short fiction. Guidance will also be provided for students who are interested in submitting their work for possible publication in literary magazines.

More information about the course will follow soon.