Wrestling Ideas into Stories:
Fiction Workshop
Instructor: Dinitia Smith
August 06 - August 19
Arrive Friday, August 5, depart Thursday, August 19 (two weeks)

In this fiction workshop, we’ll work on existing manuscripts and/or start new projects. One goal will be to explore how novels and short stories begin—where do ideas come from? But more importantly, how do we transform our ideas into stories? We’ll look at the ways in which we use imagery and dialogue to make stories come alive—and, how we keep on writing when the Muse throws rocks in our path.

We will isolate problems of the writing craft such as point of view, voice, and narrator. This course is for people who have written and published novels or for those contemplating their first. The goal will be to leave Assisi with concrete results, either revisions of an existing manuscript or the beginning of a new one. Your guide, author Dinitia Smith, specialized in literature for The New York Times.


Dinitia Smith is the author of three novels, including her latest, The Illusionist (Scribner), which Stephen King praised for its “mesmerizing, erotic suspense.” Until recently, Smith was a cultural correspondent for The New York Times based in New York, where she wrote on literary subjects. She has taught at Columbia University and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and has also written several screenplays. Smith won an Emmy Award for an NBC documentary and her work has been shown at the New York Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum. Her short fiction has been published in many literary journals.
dinitiasmith@gmail.com