Difficult characters are the best characters; complex, real and ones you can’t stop talking about. In this two hour course, we will discuss stories by Jewish writers including Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth, Isaac Babel, and Bernard Malamud and why writers should embrace the messiness. I’ll discuss strategies creating one of my own characters. Then we will have an hour to practice writing our own difficult characters anda chance to share our writing.
Karen E. Bender is the author of the story collection Refund, which was a Finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction and shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Story prize, as well as The New Order and the Words of Dr. L. All three of her collections have been Longlisted for the Story prize. Her novels are Like Normal People and A Town of Empty Rooms. Her fiction has appeared in magazines including The New Yorker, Granta, Ploughshares, Zoetrope, The Yale Review, the Harvard Review and others and have been included in the Best American Short Stories and Best American Mystery series. She has won three Pushcart prizes. She has taught in the MFA programs of universities including Hollins University and Warren Wilson College, and teaches now for SUNY Stony Brook and is Core Faculty for the Alma College MFA in creative writing. Her website is http://www.karenebender.com