Fictional Futures, Timeless Truths: A Speculative Writing Workshop

It’s often said that the only goal of speculative fiction is to entertain—but is that true? What do the tropes, imagery, and narrative quirks of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and their attendant subgenres have to offer that can help us illuminate the human condition?

In this workshop, led by award-winning science fiction author and educator, Alex Jennings, we will look at narrative tactics, devices, and techniques on display in passages by writers such as Ursula K. LeGuin, Terry Bisson, and P. Dieli Clark. We will then use what we discover to hone our vision and ideas for development of our own work through guided writing exercises.

By the end of this session, writers will have a better understanding of speculative fiction and some of its subgenres, including foundational works, new writing from guided exercises, and an understanding of the state of the field and how the submission process works.

This workshop is appropriate for writers of all levels.

Alex Jennings is a writer/editor/teacher/poet living in Baton Rouge. He was born in Wiesbaden (Germany) and raised in Gaborone (Botswana), Tunis (Tunisia), Paramaribo (Surinam) and the United States. He constantly devours pop culture and spends too much time on Bluesky.

He is the Program Director of DreamFoundry’s Con or Bust and pens a regular speculative poetry review column in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction called “Chapter and Verse.” In 2022, he was the inaugural recipient of the Imagination Unbound Fellowship at Under the Volcano, a guided writing retreat held annually in Tepoztlan, Mexico.

His writing has appeared in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Electric Velocipede, Uncanny Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, New Suns, and Current Affairs, among other venues. His debut novel, The Ballad of Perilous Graves is available wherever books are sold. You can find him goofing around on Instagram: @magicknegro, Twitter: @magicknegro, and Bluesky: @magicknegro

He is also an instructor of fiction and popular fiction at The University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program.

Support him on Patreon!

Photo by Nkechi Chibueze.