Mr. Klam, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, and GQ, put students through their paces as they attempted – quite successfully as it turned out – to come up with 'sudden fiction'. Throwing out such opening lines as "Every night, my mother talks to the washing machine" and "A coconut hit me on the head and killed me", he enabled students with very little fiction writing experience to create entire worlds of their own design, worlds inhabited by people brought to life in the space of a few lines. In Ms. Bowser's class, students bravely read their spontaneous creations to appreciative classmates. Ms. Belew's students created entire narratives in fifteen minutes, and Ms. Chang's seniors were amazed at what they discovered lurking in the recesses of their unconscious.
Wilson High School Workshops Report
Matt Klam, along with volunteer Karen Maloy, spent a rainy Monday morning working with three senior English classes at Woodrow Wilson Senior High School in Northwest DC. Mr. Klam, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, and GQ, put students through their paces as they attempted – quite successfully as it turned out – to come up with 'sudden fiction'. Throwing out such opening lines as "Every night, my mother talks to the washing machine" and "A coconut hit me on the head and killed me", he enabled students with very little fiction writing experience to create entire worlds of their own design, worlds inhabited by people brought to life in the space of a few lines. In Ms. Bowser's class, students bravely read their spontaneous creations to appreciative classmates. Ms. Belew's students created entire narratives in fifteen minutes, and Ms. Chang's seniors were amazed at what they discovered lurking in the recesses of their unconscious.
Mr. Klam, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, and GQ, put students through their paces as they attempted – quite successfully as it turned out – to come up with 'sudden fiction'. Throwing out such opening lines as "Every night, my mother talks to the washing machine" and "A coconut hit me on the head and killed me", he enabled students with very little fiction writing experience to create entire worlds of their own design, worlds inhabited by people brought to life in the space of a few lines. In Ms. Bowser's class, students bravely read their spontaneous creations to appreciative classmates. Ms. Belew's students created entire narratives in fifteen minutes, and Ms. Chang's seniors were amazed at what they discovered lurking in the recesses of their unconscious.
Posted on Monday April 21, 2008 by Karen Maloy
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