Writing to the Edge of Reality, Session 2

This workshop with novelist and Iowa Writers Workshop graduate Raeden Richardson (The Degenerates) will explore the work of writers who constantly defy easy categorisation, like Elizabeth Tan, Peter Carey, Salman Rushdie, Donald Barthelme and Kij Johnson.

So often, fiction tells us more about ourselves than any newspaper or documentary. The surreal, the speculative and the weird highlight qualities of life that we can’t find in conventional realism – if such a thing really exists! But what makes a clear yet compelling mirror to life?

In this workshop, you’ll examine fiction’s uncanny ability to defamiliarise, turning ordinary streets and locations into the sites of strangeness and revelation. Drawing on visual art, you’ll develop a new vocabulary for writing the edge of reality, viewing, interpreting and discussing the paintings of international artists.