If you’ve always wanted to try your hand at writing speculative fiction but didn’t know where to begin, this class is for you! We’ll cover some basic elements of SFF stories – such as character, tone and voice, worldbuilding, and plot – and some different approaches to telling the stories you want to tell. Along the way, we’ll experiment with exercises to tap into your innate storytelling abilities and generate ideas, and we’ll start to figure out what a sustainable creative practice looks like for you. We’ll even dabble in how to revise a rough draft, how to critique, and how to find your writing community.

Eden Robins loves novels best, but they take forever so she also writes short stories and self-absorbed essays at places like Catapult, USA Today, LA Review of Books, Apex magazine, Shimmer, Kaleidotrope, and others. Her debut novel When Franny Stands Up was named a best book of 2022 by the Chicago Reader, a best queer book of 2022 by Autostraddle, and Best Book of the Month by Bustle and Buzzfeed. She co-hosts a science podcast called No Such Thing As Boring with an actual scientist and produces a monthly live lit show in Chicago called Tuesday Funk. Previously, she sold sex toys, wrote jokes for Big Pharma, and once did a stand-up comedy set to an audience who didn’t boo. She lives in Chicago, has been to the bottom of the ocean, and will never go to space.