Craft Seminar: Against Complicity: Radical Honesty in Literary Fiction and Nonfiction with Isle McElroy
Craft Seminar: Against Complicity: Radical Honesty in Literary Fiction and Nonfiction with Isle McElroy
1 Session: Sunday, August 3
12:00-3:00pm ET
Isle McElroy
Isle McElroy is the author of the novels People Collide and The Atmospherians. Their criticism and essays regularly appear in Vulture, The Atlantic, Esquire, and elsewhere. They are the 2025-26 Shearing Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute and they currently teach in the MFA Program at Sarah Lawrence College.
“Misery is a potent aid in obliterating memory, and shame in distorting it,” Deborah Eisenberg writes in her introduction to Gregor von Rezzori’s Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, a disconcerting collection of stories centered on the moral and political compromises of everyday people that laid the foundation for the atrocities of Nazi Germany. Eisenberg’s statement reveals how willingly a person might aid in atrocity, both in the moment and in hindsight. In her short fiction, she exposes the countless ways that Americans have shielded themselves from confronting abuses performed in the name of their country. Eisenberg’s ongoing critique of everyday complicity in American life feels especially potent now. Her literary gaze, ruthless in its honesty, offers a vision of how a writer might engage with our current political climate–and the preceding decades that created this climate. In this course, we will explore the work of writers like Eisenberg, Helen DeWitt, John Keene, and others to look at strategies for both exposing and undermining complicity in works of fiction. Writers will have an opportunity to complete a short exercise in class.
Workshop Highlights:
To gain a deeper understanding of honesty in fiction and nonfiction.
To explore how writers use genre to convey literary and political truths.
To learn strategies for writing more honestly in one's own work.
This course has 1 scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Sunday, July 27.
Isle McElroy is a nonbinary writer based in Brooklyn. Their most recent novel is People Collide (HarperCollins, 2023), praised by NPR as a “deep exploration of marriage, love, and the ways we know one another.” Their debut novel is The Atmospherians (Atria, 2021), called “exceptional writing” by the New York Times. They are the author of a story collection, Daddy Issues (The Cupboard Pamphlet, 2016), winner of the Cupboard Pamphlet’s 2016 Editors’ Prize. They have received fellowships from The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, The Tin House Summer Workshop, The Sewanee Writers Conference, The Inprint Foundation, The Elizabeth George Foundation, and The National Parks Service.
McElroy is also an essayist and critic. Their writing has appeared in The Cut, BuzzFeed, Vulture, GQ, Elle, Vice, The Atlantic, Bon Appetit, Tin House, and elsewhere. In 2021, they founded Debuts and Redos, a monthly reading series featuring debut authors and authors who released books during the pandemic.
