Ryan Chapman's Blog - Posts Tagged "lecture"
Join me for a seminar on comic fiction, August 22nd
Hey everyone,
I'm popping my head over the Goodreads parapet to invite you to an online craft seminar I'm giving on Saturday August 22, 2026. The Rules of Comic Fiction (and Their Infinite Exceptions) will be held from 12pm-3pm ET in The Shipman Agency's Workroom. This is for emerging writers, readers, MFA students, and even published authors.
What do we talk about when we talk about comic voice? Vladimir Nabokov’s linguistic wordplay. Paul Beatty’s situational ironies. Oscar Wilde’s bone-dry wit. (And whomever you’re thinking about right now.) Comic voice is endlessly capacious and incredibly elastic. It allows us to trojan-horse the most difficult subjects into our fiction. It provides catharsis when the world feels on the verge of collapse. And, as we’ll learn, it’s essential for defining our prose style and our ideal reader.
This zoom-based craft seminar will enumerate strategies for employing the comic--broadly defined--in our own practice. Whether you’re interested in satire or the lightly humorous, you’ll come away with practical steps for advancing your craft. Expect nerdy discussions on rhetoric and earnest ones on empathy, with close readings of brief passages by Miranda July, Gunnhild Øyehaug, Gary Shteyngart, Donald Antrim, and Rebecca Makkai.
Also! This is a ticketed seminar, but we have a couple scholarship spots available.
I'm popping my head over the Goodreads parapet to invite you to an online craft seminar I'm giving on Saturday August 22, 2026. The Rules of Comic Fiction (and Their Infinite Exceptions) will be held from 12pm-3pm ET in The Shipman Agency's Workroom. This is for emerging writers, readers, MFA students, and even published authors.
What do we talk about when we talk about comic voice? Vladimir Nabokov’s linguistic wordplay. Paul Beatty’s situational ironies. Oscar Wilde’s bone-dry wit. (And whomever you’re thinking about right now.) Comic voice is endlessly capacious and incredibly elastic. It allows us to trojan-horse the most difficult subjects into our fiction. It provides catharsis when the world feels on the verge of collapse. And, as we’ll learn, it’s essential for defining our prose style and our ideal reader.
This zoom-based craft seminar will enumerate strategies for employing the comic--broadly defined--in our own practice. Whether you’re interested in satire or the lightly humorous, you’ll come away with practical steps for advancing your craft. Expect nerdy discussions on rhetoric and earnest ones on empathy, with close readings of brief passages by Miranda July, Gunnhild Øyehaug, Gary Shteyngart, Donald Antrim, and Rebecca Makkai.
Also! This is a ticketed seminar, but we have a couple scholarship spots available.
