Workshop: Activate Your Protagonist with Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Workshop: Activate Your Protagonist with Maurice Carlos Ruffin
2 Sessions: Saturdays, February 7 + 14
11:00-12:30pm ET
Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Maurice Carlos Ruffin is a Professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University and an instructor at Randolph College Low-Res MFA program. He is the author of three New York Times Editor's Choice books, including the novel The American Daughters (One World, 2024) and the story collection, The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You (One World, 2021) and We Cast a Shadow (One World, 2019).
This holistic generative workshop will include two sessions. Students will receive a lecture on how to create characters and stories that have narrative drive. Students will also receive information on how to use their life experiences to improve their work. In the generative portion, students will be prompted to participate in helpful exercises that range from scene construction to building entire book narratives. They will construct compelling characters lecture session making active protagonists and draw on personal life experiences to improve their writing.
This class has 1 scholarship available. To apply, please fill out this form by Friday, January 31st.
Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s most recent book is The American Daughters (One World, 2024), which Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called "a vibrant picture of antebellum New Orleans." He is also the author of the story collection The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You (One World, 2021), which was a New York Times Editors' Choice, a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and longlisted for the Story Prize. His first book, We Cast a Shadow (One World, 2019), was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize. It was a New York Times Editors' Choice and was longlisted for the 2021 DUBLIN Literary Award, the Center for Fiction Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Ruffin is the winner of several literary prizes, including the Iowa Review Award in fiction and the William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Award for Novel-in-Progress. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Oxford American, Garden & Gun, Kenyon Review, and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America.