Read Like A Writer

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The 2nd and 4th Monday of each month at 6:30 – 8:00 EST on Zoom.

Writers read to become better writers by teasing out the brilliance in the stories we love. And then trying things out for themselves. Fiction writer Riki Moss brings us short stories from The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, etc.; stories picked for their unique voices, or a stunning first paragraph, exquisite sentences, unexpected endings, the way tension builds in a conventional narrative or circles in fragments: like that. How does the writer pull it off?  Prompts are provided for generative writing, so we hear each other’s voices without judgement. A two month schedule will be posted in advance, the files provided with enough time to read before each workshop. That’s what we ask of you; Read the story, pull it apart, delight in the conversation and write.

To join a session, email [email protected]. We’ll respond with the file and a zoom link. It’s that simple.

Here are the currently scheduled workshops for 2026:

Currently Scheduled Workshops

3/9 Alexander Lumens and Bud Smith. A short story from each. I think of these as two young-ish, award snatching bad boys writing in the American aura of our literary times. Intriguing structures, some wild sentences and unsettling topics, pretty reflective of NOW.  We’ll focus on the structures, unlikable characters/with heartbreak. Criminality, weird behavior, small town America. Think Denis Johnson.

3/23 TC Boyle: The Pool. Boyle is a master of what he does, hip, funny, curious, satirical – a friend to animals and the environment without honking about it. Here’s what he says about this story: “When I was younger, I ran at the world headlong. Now that I have the wisdom of age, I foresee the potential fatality in everything and try to moderate my behavior accordingly. Still, most days, I wind up bleeding.” We’ve workshopped Boyle before and it’s time to dip into him again. Here is the modern family man blithely ignoring disaster then  avoiding it. Maybe.

4/13 Raymond Carver: The Elephant paired with Rivka Galchen: Unreasonable. Here’s an example of how one writer directly inspires another. Of course all the stories we read spin in our minds and touch what we do, but it’s rare that a writer directly addresses the influence of another story written some 30 years before. Galchen says “The structure of Elephant, one of Raymond Carver’s last stories, is simple, but the emotional effect is outsized, numinous, convincing, and comic”, she sees the narrative shift in Carver’s story and wonders how her narrator and characters would experience a similar shift in narration. It’s intriguing to follow her reasoning. In both stories, the characters respond to their particular political times.

4/27 Sequoia Nagamatsu: The Pig Son. AI tells me The Pig Son is a standout, emotional chapter from his best selling novel How High We Go in the Dark. It follows a grieving scientist who, while developing organ-transplant pigs to cure a global pandemic, bonds with an engineered pig named “Snortorious P.I.G.” that develops human speech and emotional consciousness.” I’ve read it, and it’s poignant, intelligent…we can talk here of the morality of murdering animals to save humans, as well as what we think of talking pigs. He is an American novelist with deep Japanese roots who lives with his wife, dog and a Sony Aibo robotic dog named Calvino.

Workshop leader Riki Moss