The Short Story Intensive
Eight weeks of rigorous short fiction workshops. Write, revise, repeat.
Instructor
Maya Okafor
Starts
September 8, 2025
Ends
October 31, 2025
Price
$650
Cohort Size
Up to 10 writers
About This Course
This is not a place to workshop the same draft forever. The Short Story Intensive pushes you to produce, fail fast, and build the muscle memory of a writer who finishes things.
Over eight weeks you'll complete two full drafts, workshop both with your cohort, and leave with at least one story ready to submit to journals.
We'll study writers who broke the form—Carver, O'Connor, Chekhov, Borges, Lucia Berlin—and steal from them deliberately.
Instructor
Maya Okafor
Maya Okafor's fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Best American Short Stories. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and teaches at Bread Loaf.
Syllabus
- 01Week 1 — The engine: what does your story want?
- 02Week 2 — Structure: why scenes, not chapters
- 03Week 3 — First workshop: Draft 1 submissions
- 04Week 4 — Voice and distance
- 05Week 5 — Compression and the cut
- 06Week 6 — Second workshop: Draft 2 submissions
- 07Week 7 — Endings and what they cost
- 08Week 8 — Final revisions + submission strategy
What the Workshop Looks Like
Anonymized notes from a real cohort session. This is the level of feedback you can expect.
“"The border agent had her father's eyes." This is the engine. Everything after it is the story asking: what does that mean, and what will she do with it? Right now the piece answers the first question but not the second. Push further.”
Instructor note, Week 1
“The inventory structure is doing real work — cataloguing as a way of processing grief. But the last item (the mixing bowl) is landing softer than it should. It's the most charged object in the list. Consider whether it belongs at the end and whether you're letting it do its full weight.”
Cohort note, Week 1
“What I kept noticing: the prose gets quieter as the stakes get higher. That's not a mistake — it's your instinct telling you something. Trust it more in the ending. The understatement is where this piece lives.”
Cohort note, Week 2
Apply Now
Up to 10 writers per cohort. Tell us about yourself and your work.