- Total price
€35.00
1 session
- Schedule
One-time session
Oct 7
- Time
19:00–20:30
- Class size
Min 6 · Max 10
Arguably, the two most important moments of an effective short story are the beginning and the ending. This class is not so much about the famous “first line” as it is about how a story’s opening sentences make a promise to the reader and how the last lines deliver on that promise. We’ll study how skilled writers open a story—establishing voice, character, and situation—and how they close that story for the reader. We’ll draw from examples of published fiction, students’ own work, and in-class generative exercises to understand what elements and techniques create effective openings and endings.
By the end of the class, students will also have some practical tools for how to spot and fix problems in their own work. Although we’ll focus on the short story, the insights and examples from the class apply to other forms of fiction as well.
About Krista Timeus Cerezo
Krista Timeus Cerezo is a bilingual literary critic and fiction writer whose work has appeared in AGNI, Puerto del Sol, Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. She leads a writing workshop in Barcelona and is an assistant editor at Narrative Magazine. A voting member of the National Book Critics Circle, Krista reviews literature in translation and serves a a judge for the Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize. She splits her time between Barcelona and Guatemala City, where she’s from. She holds a PhD in Public Policy from the Hertie School in Berlin and an MFA from NYU.