Do you have multiple stories or essays that connect to each other (perhaps you’ve been writing short stories about the same family, or characters from the same town, or you’ve been writing essays about various periods of your life)? Have you wondered how these pieces might add up to something greater than the sum of its parts?

In this four-hour workshop, we’ll examine what linked collections are (and how they differ from novels and memoirs), how they work, and how you can form connections between your own stories or essays. We’ll look at successful examples and methods for linking stories/essays. You will learn how to identify the themes in your work and how to use those themes to generate new work. You’ll leave the workshop with a solid sense of how your individual pieces resonate with each other, as well as new writing through in-class prompts, and a plan for more writing as you continue developing your linked collection.

Shasta Grant is the author of Gather Us Up and Bring Us Home (Split Lip Press, 2017) and winner of the 2015 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest, selected by Ann Patchett. Her stories and essays have appeared in cream city review, Epiphany, Hobart, wigleaf, and elsewhere. She was a 2020 Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow in Fiction, the 2016 SmokeLong Quarterly Kathy Fish Fellow, and has received residencies from Hedgebrook and The Kerouac House. She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has taught at Ball State University and The Indiana Writers’ Center. She works as a writing coach and editor for One Lit Place and is also the Coordinating Editor at SmokeLong Quarterly.