Writers are often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” The answer is usually some version of this: “All around me.” We draw upon current events, personal memories and family anecdotes, and weird news from all sorts of media for our storytelling material. It’s an impulse that comes naturally, to hear a story on the news and think, “I should write about that.” The best writers know how to turn those random, unexpected pieces of inspiration into fully developed essays, stories, and novels. This class will teach students to observe reality with the eyes of a journalist and imagination of a fiction writer in order to translate facts and events into riveting stories in any genre.

Students will be sent several published pieces to read in advance of the class and should bring them with them. The goal of the course is to take facts, details, and anecdotes and learn how to turn them into fully-realized stories.

About the instructor:

Antonio Ruiz-Camacho was born and raised in Toluca, Mexico. A former Knight Journalism fellow at Stanford University, a Dobie Paisano fellow in fiction by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters, and a Walter E. Dakin fellow in fiction at Sewanee Writers’ Conference, he earned his MFA from The New Writers Project at UT Austin. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Texas Monthly, The Millions, and elsewhere. His debut story collection Barefoot Dogs won the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Book of Fiction and was named a Best Book of 2015 by Kirkus Reviews, San Francisco Chronicle, Texas Observer and PRI’s The World. It was published in Spanish translation by the author, and is forthcoming in Dutch. Antonio lives in Austin, Texas, with his family, where he’s currently at work on a novel.