Brilliant Openings: How to Grab Agents & Editors on Page One: A Workshop for Democracy

Writing’s all fun and games until the rejections start piling up. In this intensive (though informal) workshop, we’ll aim to make sure your stories or essays draw the reader in, rather than leaving them in the dark. We’ll take a second look at your opening pages, as well as the opening pages of works by Lorrie Moore, Saul Bellow, and others, in an effort to understand how they hook readers from word one

This is a Workshop for Democracy. For each Workshop for Democracy, instructor Steve Almond will contribute 100% of his teaching pay to the organization Black Voters Matter (www.blackvotersmatterfund.org/donate/). The instructor asks that students pay Hugo House a discounted fee for the class and then consider contributing to a local cause of their choosing. The suggested donation is $100, though students are free to contribute what feels right to them. Before class, we will briefly discuss what being active participants in democracy and citizens of good faith means to us in this vital moment.

Registration dates:

August 22: Scholarship Donation Day (Learn more.)

August 23: Member registration opens

August 30: General registration opens

Steve Almond

Steve Almond is the author of twelve books of fiction and non-fiction including The New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His novel All the Secrets of the World, will be published in 2022. His short fiction has appeared in the Best American Short Stories, the Pushcart Prize, and Best American Mysteries. His essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine and elsewhere. Almond teaches at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism and Wesleyan University, and lives outside Boston with his wife, three children, and considerable anxiety.