Acrpost: A Project of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres

Event Description

Plotless Fiction

Stuart Ross

Writers Retreat Master Class

Crawford Room

9:00 – 11:00 am

Limited enrolment.

Writer, editor, and writing teacher Stuart Ross offers a relaxed, supportive workshop that explores the possibilities of fiction beyond the constraints of narrative and the artificiality of plot. In this hands-on session, you will be introduced to writers whose works push against the definitions of the story, and will produce your own short works, using a variety of enjoyable, challenging writing strategies.

“I am drawn to the weird, to the dreamlike, to the absurd,” says Stuart Ross. “I don’t think we should be constrained by the laws of the real world in our writing.”

Stuart is a prolific writer, editor, and teacher. He is the author of twenty books of poetry, fiction, and essays including the novel Pockets, and the poetry collection Motel of the Opposable Thumbs. Stuart is winner of the ReLit Award for Short Fiction, the Mona Elaine Adilman Award for Jewish Fiction, The Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry, and most recently, the 2019 Harbourfront Festival Prize for his contributions to Canadian literature.

Stuart’s most recent title is I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub, a sometimes poignant, sometimes outrageous third story collection deepens that his exploration of the possibilities of the short story and narrative with an arsenal of pathos, absurdism, humour, and cantankerousness. Of his writing, NOW Magazine says ““Ross doesn’t waste a word, and the impact is often breathtaking. He knows how to extend a metaphor so that even the most absurd or hallucinatory episodes—and there are many of these—convey deep meaning.”

Stuart is the acquisitions editor behind the newly formed 1366 Books, home to works of accessible yet innovative and experimental fiction—works that challenge the conventions of narrative and form, and perhaps even challenge the conventions of the sentence or the page itself.

Stuart lives in Cobourg, Ontario, where he is working on about a dozen new books.