Summer 2026 Course Atlas

SUMMER SESSION 2

Dr. Victoria Kornick       

Tues/Thurs 6:30 - 8:00pm, online

Pre-requisite: None

In this class, students will develop their craft as fiction writers, considering how to tell compelling, memorable stories, and why storytelling matters. How can fiction reflect and illuminate our lived experiences? How might it imagine alternate ones? Why do we write, and what can our writing offer to others? To answer these questions, we’ll read fiction by a range of contemporary writers and respond to it as writers—that is, we’ll think critically about why we reacted to it as we did, what we can take from it ourselves, where it inspired or failed us, and how it worked. Students will write often, drafting and revising flash fiction experiments and several longer stories. We will explore the possibilities of plot and structure, characters and conflict, scene and setting, dialogue and narrative tension. Through exercises, workshops, individual meetings, and discussions, students will strengthen their voices as writers and find effective ways to enter, draft, and revise their work. Students will write fiction that grapples with the complexity of lived experience, and they will leave the course with a writing practice that is both sustainable and sustaining. 

Text:

The Best American Short Stories 2024, Edited by Lauren Groff

Assessment and Grading:

1. Participation & Preparedness (25%): The quality (not frequency) of verbal communication, engagement and preparedness in craft discussions of readings and workshop, attendance, and written feedback to one another factor into this grade.
2. Workshop Submissions (20%): Workshop submission evaluation is based on (1) meeting page and prompt requirements, (2) how well the work engages with the elements of fiction we’ve discussed in class, and (3) whether students’ own craft as a writer is developing based on feedback.
3. Exercises (25%): Students will also write very short pieces of fiction (about 500-700 words) in response to prompts inspired by our reading. Exercises should be early drafts and experiments; they will be evaluated based on engagement with the prompt.
4. Final Portfolio (25%): At the end of the course, students will turn in a final portfolio including significant revisions of their workshop submissions and several exercises, based on instructor feedback, that of workshop, and the student’s own sense of how the work should evolve. Evaluation of the portfolios considers the development of each piece in revision, beyond simply taking workshop edits, and the overall strength of writing in these final pieces.

Final Portfolio Craft Statement and Process Note (5%): Alongside the revisions, students will also turn in a 1-2 page, single-spaced reflective statement about where they are in your writing. At the end of this creative statement, students will include a brief note (one paragraph) about their revision process.

This is an online course. Emory College Online summer courses have required synchronous/live sessions every week. Students must be available to sign into and virtually attend the course online during those times (noted as the course meeting times- all times listed are local to Atlanta). Each course will also involve significant asynchronous material that you access on your own time in addition to standard amounts of readings and course assignments. Students should plan to spend 15-20 hours/week on this course. Please also be aware that faculty will begin corresponding with students during Week Zero of the course (one week before the official start date of the course), and that some interaction with the course may be required at that time. Students should begin checking the Canvas course site regularly one week prior to the official start of the term.