The Weird and the Eerie

Fiction Writing Workshop with Vanessa Saunders

Learn to use strangeness as a narrative engine in this all-levels workshop. We'll read passages of weird and eerie short fiction, then follow creative prompts to write some of our own.

This program will take place upstairs in Meeting Room 3/4.

In this workshop, we'll learn how to use strangeness as a narrative engine, exploring the speculative subgenres of gothic horror, weird and new weird fiction, magical realism, or dark fairy tales. We'll close-read passages of various speculative short fiction before working on generative creative prompts to explore how to move a story forward by creating an atmosphere of dread, horror, or suspense. 

Open to all levels of adult writers.

Vanessa Saunders teaches as a Professor of Practice at Loyola University New Orleans. She was the editor-in-chief of Helium Journal from 2013 to 2016. Her writing has appeared in Writer's Digest, Writer's Chronicle, Seneca Review, Sycamore Review, Los Angeles Review, Nat. Brut, Entropy, PANK, Passages North, Stockholm Review of Literature and other journals.​​ Her debut novel, The Flat Woman, won FC2's Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize, and her upcoming novel, Invisible Illnesses, was the runner-up for the Faulkner Wisdom Novel In-Progress Award in 2025.

Sponsored by the Friends of the New Orleans Public Library. 

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