ORANGE, Calif. – Chapman University welcomes aspiring fiction writers to apply for the 6th Annual Fiction Writing Workshop led by renowned, award-winning author and Chapman Professor of English Richard Bausch. The semester-long, free workshop meets weekly beginning in February 2018. Applicants must submit a fiction manuscript of up to 15 pages by Friday, January 26, 2018. (Nonfiction, poetry, etc. will not be considered.) Bausch will personally read and consider all manuscripts and select ten participants for the workshop, who will be notified shortly thereafter.
“We don’t put any limitations on applicants, either by age or by background,” said Bausch. “Who can tell where the next good writer will come from? A selected participant could be a high school student, an unemployed person, a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a custodian or restaurant worker, a retired bank examiner, a truck driver or a teacher. Frankly, the more diversity in the class, the better. We encourage everyone to apply – so dust off that manuscript you’ve been working on, or write a new one and submit it.”
Chapman University professor and author Richard Bausch.
The workshop will commence meeting on February 6 and will run, once a week, for 14 weeks. There is no age requirement for applicants – workshop participants have ranged in age from high school students to people in their 80s. In a break from the previous five years, the 2018 Writing Workshop will meet at the new 1888 Center located in Orange’s historic district near Chapman’s campus.
Past workshop participant Richard A. Smith says, “Mr. Bausch and the group helped me with two pieces of work, a travel essay and a short story. Based on the workshop feedback regarding tonality and the through-line of the piece, I split the travel essay into two separate pieces and sold them both for publication. The short story, revised according to comments of the group and Mr. Bausch, has received interest from a publisher and is in its final stages of completion. I have not been to many other workshops, but this one stood apart for its emphasis on a free flowing discussion in a safe environment. Having this kind of camaraderie and a forum for sharing our work with smart, accomplished writers makes all the difference in the world.”
Manuscripts of no more than 15 pages should be sent to https://web.chapman.edu/WritingWorkshop/. Submissions should include the writer’s name, phone number and email address. The submission need not be a complete story, but should be what you consider to be a good sample of your fiction writing. (Please do not send your manuscript in pdf format.) More information is available at: https://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/english/writing-workshop.aspx
Students, faculty and employees of Chapman University are not eligible to apply.
Richard Bausch is an acknowledged master of both the novel and short-story form. He has seen his work published in Esquire, Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, GQ, and The Southern Review, among many others, and anthologized in New Stories from the South, The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize Stories, The Vintage Book of the Contemporary American Short Story, The Granta Book of the American Short Story and more.
He is the author of 12 novels and eight collections of stories, including the novels Rebel Powers, Violence, The Night Season, Hello to the Cannibals, Thanksgiving Night and Peace, and the story collections The Selected Stories of Richard Bausch, Spirits, The Fireman’s Wife, Wives and Lovers and Something Is Out There. His most recent novel, Before, During, After, was published in 2014 to widespread critical acclaim. His novel The Last Good Time was made into a feature-length motion picture directed by Bob Balaban. Six of his stories have been gathered in the recently released film Endangered Species, by French Director Gilles Bourdos (Renoir, Afterwards), and his novel Peace is presently being shot in Canada, by Academy Award Winning Director Robert David Port.
Bausch has won two National Magazine Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Fund Writer’s Award, the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/ Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, and The Rea Award. He is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and since 2002 has been the sole editor of the prestigious Norton Anthology of Short Fiction.
About Chapman University
As an academically distinguished center of learning, Chapman University attracts extraordinary students and faculty from around the globe. Its ten schools and colleges foster a vibrant intellectual community, and provide extensive opportunities for students to learn, grow and discover alongside remarkable faculty. The University is home to some 8,000 students pursuing bachelor, master and doctoral degrees, and is alma mater to more than 40,000 alumni found throughout the United States and the world. Now celebrating its 156th year, Chapman is known for its distinguishing strengths in leadership and civic engagement, in the arts and entertainment disciplines, and in specialized sectors of technology and science. The University is comprised of its main campus in Orange, California, and the Rinker Health Science campus for graduate health science programs in Irvine, California. Visit us at www.chapman.edu.
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