Tell the Truth but Tell it Spec: Using the Genre Conventions of Horror and Science Fiction to Tell Stories that Matter
Sometimes our most important stories are our most painful ones; stories like these can be particularly difficult to tell about not only because of the subject matter, which readers may want to distance themselves from, but because the language around these stories becomes clichéd. In this workshop, participants will explore how certain conventions of genre fiction, particularly those of both horror and science fiction, can lend themselves to new, innovative ways to tell hard stories in ways readers want to engage with. This workshop will discuss how to use genre fiction conventions as metaphor, the importance of asking “what if” when writing speculative fiction, and how these borrowed genre fiction conventions can give us outlines for our own most important short stories. After discussing example stories, participants will write their own opening for a speculative short story.
SAVE ON MULTIPLE EVENTS WITH A FESTIVAL PASS.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Paola Ferrante is a woman writer living with depression. Her short fiction collection, Her Body Among Animals (Book*hug 2023), was a 2023 Foreword INDIES finalist and made the 2023 CBC Books fall reading list. Her debut poetry collection, What to Wear When Surviving A Lion Attack (Mansfield Press, 2019) was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She has won The New Quarterly’s Peter Hinchcliffe Prize for Fiction, Room Magazine’s Fiction Prize, Grain’s Short Grain Award for Poetry, and been longlisted for The Journey Prize. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her spouse, Mat, and their son.
