The Craft of Fiction – An Introductory Workshop

Toto Funds the Arts (TFA) in association with Bangalore International Centre is pleased to announce a workshop on creative writing by Saikat Majumdar

 Venue: Bangalore International Centre, 7, 4th Main Road, Stage 2 Domlur, Bengaluru 560 071

Date: Friday 29 April 2022

Time:  2.00 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.

(This is a free workshop)

Note to applicants (between 18 and 35 years):

We can only accommodate 15 participants on a first-come-first-served basis. Please email your brief bio and 300 words on why you want to join this workshop to tfaindia84@gmail.com by April 27 5.00 pm at the latest.

We urge the participants to visit Saikat’s website – www.saikatmajumdar.com to learn more about his work and read excerpts from his books. 

About the workshop:

Is fiction unreal? Does it have to be invented? What is the place of the real in fiction? Where does reality end, and the fictional begin? Does fiction involve telling a story? Is it possible to have fiction without a story? What is the relation between the modern literary genres of the novel and the short story with ancient forms of storytelling?

 Is it possible to learn to write? In a classroom? Is it teachable? Is it like the technical art forms – filmmaking, sculpture, photography? How important are technicalities in literature? If life and language are all we need, is our everyday life the best classroom for creative writers? What place does creative writing have next to other university subjects – literature, history, sociology, the sciences, the performing arts?

 We will examine these questions, and Saikat will share his own process of writing, and the experience crafting different dimensions of fiction. A discussion will be followed by a writing exercise. Participants will subsequently be invited to share their work with the group and exchange feedback.

About the facilitator:

SAIKAT MAJUMDAR is a Professor of English & Creative Writing at Ashoka University. His most recent book is The Middle Finger, a campus novel that examines the intricacy of the teacher-student relation through the lens of ancient myths. Previous novels include The Scent of God (2019), a story of romantic love between two boys in a Hindu monastic boarding school, and The Firebird (2015), which narrates a young boy’s destructive relation with the art form of theatre through his mother’s life as an actress. The Scent of God was one of Times of India’s Most Talked About Books of 2019 and a finalist for the inaugural Mathrubhumi Book of the Year Award, and The Firebird was finalist at the Bangalore Literature Festival Fiction Prize and the Mumbai Film Festival Word-to-Screen Market. Saikat has also published a work of nonfiction, College (2018), of literary criticism, Prose of the World (2013), and a co-edited collection of essays, The Critic as Amateur (2019).

Creative non-fiction workshop

Two–Day Creative Non-Fiction Workshop
Saturday 30 July and Sunday 31 July 2011

Toto Funds the Arts (TFA), in association with British Council, Bangalore is pleased to announce a two-day workshop titled “Writing True: Non-Fiction and the Creative Writer”, which will be conducted by Annie Zaidi.

Venue: British Library, Prestige Takt, 23 Kasturba Road Cross (Opp: Visvesvaraiah Industrial & Technological Museum), Bangalore

Dates: Saturday 30 July and Sunday 31 July 2011

Time: 10 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., both days.

Fee: Rs 1800, inclusive of lunch, tea/coffee and refreshments

The workshop is open to anyone above the age of 18. Basic competence in English is a necessity. Since the workshop will have not more than 15 participants, we will accept applications on a first-come-first-served basis. Your application, either sent by post to the address below or emailed to tfaindia84@gmail.com, should include the following: postal address, email ID, phone numbers (landline and mobile) AND a paragraph on why you wish to join this workshop.

Once you are selected, your cheque for Rs 1800 made out to Toto Funds the Arts should be couriered to H-301, Adarsh Gardens, 47th Cross, 8th Block, Jayanagar, Bangalore 560082. Ph. 26990549, 9880623357.

ANNIE ZAIDI has worked as a newspaper and magazine journalist for 11 years, reporting from urban and rural areas. In 2006 she was awarded a Charles Wallace India Trust scholarship towards a writing residency at Stirling University, Scotland. She won first prize for poetry at the Prakriti Festival, and has won prizes for poetry and flash fiction at the Kala Ghoda Festival. Her plays have been shortlisted for The Hindu Metro Plus Playwright Award. Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales, a first collection of essays drawing upon reportage, travel and personal history was published by Tranquebar Press (2010). The Bad Boy’s Guide to the Good Indian Girl, a series of interlinked fictional narratives, has been written in collaboration with Smriti Ravindra and will be published by Zubaan in the summer of 2011. Crush, a series of illustrated poems in collaboration with artist Gynelle Alves, was published by Jaico (2006). Other essays, poems and short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies, including Women Changing India (Zubaan); First Proof: 2 (Penguin India), 21 Under 40 (Zubaan, India; ISBN, Italy), and in literary journals including The Little Magazine, Desilit, Pratilipi, The Raleigh Review, Mint Lounge, Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi) and Asian Cha. She continues to freelance for a number of magazines and writes a weekly column with the DNA (Daily News and Analysis).

WORKSHOP DETAILS

Writing True: Non-Fiction and the Creative Writer.

Day 1

Session 1: Introductions
Workshop leader and participants get introduced to each other.
This is followed by an introduction to the many sub-genres of non-fiction with brief samplings and some fun exercises that require no prior preparation.

Session 2: Confessions
This session will examine ‘true’ narratives. Why are we so compelled by the media, news, or true stories that lend themselves to fiction? What does this mean for us as writers/artists? And when does one decide that a certain story needs to be told as it is, without the fig leaf of a fictional disclaimer?

Session 3: Step One
This session will guide participants towards sources of inspiration, so that they can go looking for true stories they want to tell.

Session 4: Step Five
This session will be a quick exercise in ascertaining quality, and differentiating judgment from personal taste. Participants will be exposed to a wide range of reading material in the process. They will also be given a task to finish and bring back the next day.

Day 2

Session 1: Subjectivity
This session will focus on choosing a person as a subject, then populating the world of your writing with details, and establishing perspectives through the life of that subject.

Session 2: Following up
This session will follow up on the exercise that participants had been asked to finish the previous day.

Session 3: Creative Borrowing
This session will be devoted to figuring out how many tools a non-fiction writer can borrow from other genres of writing, and how they can be best applied to making their work more literary, more creative.

Session 4: Structure
The last session will briefly discuss how to devise a coherent structure for longer, or book-length, non-fiction.

And finally, tentative step towards what could be the truest thing you ever wrote. A set of exercises will help you begin a piece of writing that will be personal in tone and style. It will lead participants into an essay, or even an investigative report (though it may well lead towards something else in another genre).