of Speculation, the narrator makes an observation about the rural town to which the married couple at the novel’s center has moved:

Homes, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Kristen Roupenian, author of the viral short story “Cat Person” and Jennifer Clement, PEN International president.Near the end of Jenny Offill’s acclaimed second novel, Dept. Check out our podcast archive to listen to recordings of previous Master Classes with writers such as A.M. The classes are conducted in an interview format with plenty of room for questions. In this series, working writers talk tips, tricks and techniques with a focus on a single novel or collection. Karen’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Kenyon Review, Tahoma Literary Review, an Asian short story anthology A Tapestry of Colours, The Common, The Shanghai Literary Review, among others. She is the author of the novel The Dancing Girl and the Turtle, a work of historical fiction set in 1930s Shanghai.

Karen Kao is a teacher with the International Writers’ Collective. She’s taught at MFA programs at Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Syracuse University, and others. She’s the recipient of a number of prestigious fellowships, including a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her shorter work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review and Slate among other notable publications. Jenny Offill is the author of three critically acclaimed novels and four children’s books. If you’re based in Amsterdam, check with Athenaeum Boekhandel (Spui location). You can purchase copies of her books in ebook and paperback formats from most major retailers.

Jenny will be talking with teacher Karen Kao about how curiosity feeds her writing, how humor and sadness work together, what novelists can learn from poetry, writing for children, and much more. If you’d like to get a feel for her work and wonderful sense of humour, read this interview with her in the Guardian about Weather, which tackles the climate crisis, and this one “ How to Write Fiction When the Planet Is Falling Apart” in the New York Times. She’s also the author of a number of children’s books. of Speculation (named one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by the New York Times Book Review) and Weather (shortlisted for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction). Jenny is perhaps best known for her novel, Dept. Best-selling American novelist Jenny Offill will give a master class for us on 17 July 2022 from 17:30 to 19:00 at Studio BloemDwars, Bloemgracht 167, 1016 KM Amsterdam (see map) with drinks and bites afterward.