About the workshop
Good writing starts with strong characters. In this DEEP DIVE INTO CHARACTERS workshop, centered on personal nonfiction writing but applicable to fiction, novelist and essayist Diana Spechler will guide you through exercises and prompts that shine a light on human nature, your own nature, and the natures of your characters.
About the Instructor
Diana Spechler is the author of the novels Who By Fire (Harper Perennial, 2008) and Skinny (Harper Perennial, 2011), and of the New York Times Opinion series Going Off. She has written for The Guardian, GQ, Washington Post, Esquire, New York, Paris Review Daily, The Wall Street Journal, Glimmer Train Stories, The Southern Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Harper’s, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, Boston Globe, National Geographic Traveler, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House Open Bar, BBC Travel, Saveur, Bon Appetit, Ploughshares, and many other publications. Her work has been included in a number of anthologies, including Indelible In The Hippocampus (McSweeney’s 2019). She is also a seven-time Moth StorySLAM winner and has been featured on The Moth Radio Hour, The Moth podcast, and NPR. Her awards and honors include the Orlando Nonfiction Prize from A Room of Her Own Foundation, a Yaddo residency, a Hawthornden Castle residency, a Steinbeck Fellowship at San Jose State University, the writer-in-residency at Portsmouth Abbey School, a LABA Fellowship, a Visiting Artist residency at The Betsy Hotel, and a Willapa Bay AiR residency. She was a Szozopol Fiction Fellow in 2013. She teaches writing for Stanford University’s Online Writers’ Studio and elsewhere.
