Advanced Fiction: Writing Horror

How do authors achieve the spine-tingling, bone-chilling, nightmare-inducing effects of great horror fiction? In addition to studying works of classic and contemporary horror, students in this course complete two works of short fiction before workshopping and presenting a final work. Throughout, we consider the diversity of the genre, from the gothic romanticism of Bram Stoker and Nathaniel Hawthorne to the paranoiac parables of Shirley Jackson and Ira Levin as well as the blockbuster works of Stephen King. We also pay considerable attention to emerging voices in the genre, studying selected works from Tananarive Due, Paul Tremblay, Carmen Maria Machado, Otessa Moshfegh, Emily Carroll, and Iain Reed. For final works, students are invited to workshop standalone works of short form fiction or selections from larger projects (novels, anthologies, scripts) provided these works are developed and drafted during the course.