Editor's Note: In advance of the March 13 deadline to apply for Lit Fest Advanced Workshops, we've asked the 2021 Visiting Authors for a preview of their workshop style, what they're reading, and more.
What books/movies/tv shows have fired you up lately?
I'm watching Call My Agent! (Dix Pour Cent) on Netflix, and it's the perfect mix of smart and funny and dramatic. I'm reading Julia Phillips' Disappearing Earth, and while I found the first chapter really emotionally tough (two sisters are kidnapped) the rest is easier, and the whole thing has been riveting so far.
What are you working/currently trying to work on these days?
Oof. It's a novel about a podcaster who finds herself embroiled in reinvestigating a falsely solved murder from her own boarding school days. I'm in a fight with it right now.
How would you describe your workshop style?
We have a lot of fun, and we end up laughing a lot. We do a fairly rigorous chiropractic adjustment on the work, with an eye on structure and momentum. I've been doing this for about ten years, and I haven't made anyone cry yet, at least not that I know of.
Are we living in a simulation or no?
Nah, we're living in the choices we've made. This is one of those years that they're going to write a million books about, like 1929 or 1968. When you look back on those years, they were so clearly moments of reckoning. We're living in another one.
Rebecca Makkai is teaching Advanced Weeklong Fiction Workshop: The Arc of Story, The Architecture of Plot. Learn more here. Apply via Submittable.
