Description
No one would deny that storytelling is an art form. For some, it is a sort of memoir, for others it is more performance art. In this workshop we will be looking at the ways that storytelling can benefit from the techniques of literary fiction. From structure to plot to diction, literary fiction has its own distinct conventions. Literary short stories have a tightness, symbolic resonance and poetic diction that spoken stories often eschew. Borrowing from these conventions can help to push our told stories to a new level of insight and depth. In this workshop, we will take our original stories and rework them using some of the techniques of the literary masters.
About David Dykes
David Dykes was born in the 60s outside of the factory town of Rockford Tennessee. His father, a local journalist, and mother, a speech therapist, instilled in him a deep appreciation and anxiety about language which culminated in a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Tennessee, after which he moved to San Miguel de Allende Mexico to work various jobs from bar bouncer to babysitter, later co-founding a successful private school. In the 90s he moved to Texas to complete a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at Texas State University.
Since then he has worked at both the University of Tennessee and the University of New Orleans teaching writing and literature between longer bouts of teaching at the San Miguel high school he helped found. He has worked as an editor for small literary magazines, including the 1980s iteration of The San Miguel Writer. He has found work editing novels and contributing to scripts and screenplays, has taught at the San Miguel Writers’ Conference, participated in local storytelling and poetry events, and continues to teach young folks at the Victoria Robbins School in San Miguel.
