Happily Ever After: Finding the Perfect Ending, with Emily Lackey
An ending can make or break a story. Think of a gymnast on the vault: she can defy gravity, flip in the air seventeen times, but if she can’t stick her landing, the audience will remember little else. In narrative, an ending has a similar impact on the audience’s experience: it can break it by not providing an authentic sense of closure, or it can make it by surprising the reader in a way that keeps them thinking about the story for years to come. But how do we make sure to stick our endings? In this half-day workshop, writers will discover the five things that strong endings do well, study examples of successful endings in literature, and explore strategies for finding the right ending to our stories. Perfect for writers of all genres!
Saturday, April 24, 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. ($75)
Emily Lackey is Writers in Progress’s Assistant Director. Her stories and essays have been published in Glimmer Train, Prairie Schooner, Post Road, The Literary Review, Longreads, The Rumpus, Green Mountains Review, and The Huffington Post, among others. She was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and an artist-in-residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and Newnan ArtRez. After receiving her MFA from the University of New Hampshire, she taught writing at the University of New Hampshire and in the graduate writing program at Southern New Hampshire University.
