Event

How To Write Like I Do with Elizabeth Kostova

In this workshop, we'll explore avenues into historical fiction, including the family histories we all have as ready material. We'll discuss the obsessive joys of research, experiment with turning historical events into character, dialogue, and description, and begin a new short story/novel. Bring your interests in the past, any information you'd like to share about aspects of history that fascinate you, and the oldest (safely portable) object you have in your home.

ABOUT ELIZABETH: Elizabeth Kostova was born in Connecticut in 1964 and holds a BA in British Studies from Yale University and a Master of Fine Arts in the Writing of Fiction from the University of Michigan. She writes fiction, essays, and poetry. Her work has appeared in such journals as Mississippi Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Best American Poetry, and Another Chicago Magazine. Her first novel, The Historian (Little, Brown, 2005) is partly set in the Bulgaria of the 1950s and has been translated into 40 languages. It was the first novel to place at number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for fiction. Her second novel, The Swan Thieves, will be published in the United States and Bulgaria in January 2010. She is cofounder of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation for Creative Writing in Bulgaria, which sponsors literary and translation prizes and an annual international fiction seminar on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria (for further information/applications, see www.ekf.bg <http://www.ekf.bg> ). She teaches in Sozopol and at the University of Michigans Bear River Writing Conference.