IN PERSON: The novella is a strange fictional breed. The one definition on which literary critics agree is its length: narrative fiction that is shorter than a novel and longer than a short story. Saddled with labels like the Goldilocks or no man’s land of fiction and often underestimated, the novella in the hands of a master writer offers the reader unexpected rewards. Its comparative brevity forces writers to be judicious with their diction and maintain a laser focus on the characters and conflicts to achieve an intensity often lacking in shorter or longer works. We will consider the challenges of this genre and examine five novellas by classic and contemporary writers. On subjects ranging from the ordinary (an Irish coal man makes deliveries) to the extraordinary (a man awakens to find he has turned into a giant insect) to the fanciful (Queen Elizabeth stumbles upon a lending library outside of Buckingham Palace), these works lend themselves to thoughtful analysis and spirited discussion. | Facilitated discussion.
Max enrollment: 12.
Location: Judea Reform Congregation, 1933 W. Cornwallis Rd, Durham NC 27705
