Genre: Fiction

Black Sea Workshop

The 2026 Black Sea Workshop, sponsored by the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, will be held from June 26 to July 2 at the Sozopol Art Gallery in Sozopol, Bulgaria. The workshop features time and space to write; workshops; lectures on local history, architecture, and folklore; student and faculty readings; and an excursion to Varvara, a picturesque village located on the Black Sea coast by the Strandzha mountains for poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers.

Type: 
CONFERENCE
Ignore Event Date Field?: 
no
Event Date: 
June 26, 2026
Rolling Admissions: 
no
Application Deadline: 
March 1, 2026
Financial Aid?: 
no
Financial Aid Application Deadline: 
June 29, 2025
Free Admission: 
no
Contact Information: 

Black Sea Workshop, 149 Evlogi I Hristo Georgievi Boulevard, Apartment 10, Sofia 1504, Bulgaria. Violeta Radkova, Managing Director. 

Victoria Kostova
Senior Coordinator
Contact City: 
Sozopol, Bulgaria

Aria Aber: Good Girl

Caption: 

“I love when a character in a novel, or in a story, or even in a poem, experiences a sense of change that they cannot come back from.” In this Books Are Magic event, Aria Aber reads from her debut novel, Good Girl (Hogarth, 2025), and discusses themes of shame, self-destruction, and coming of age as an artist in a conversation with Leslie Jamison. For more from Aber, read her installment of our Ten Questions series.

Genre: 

Real Horrors

1.15.25

In the film Nightbitch, an adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel of the same name directed by Marielle Heller, a new mother contends with the growing feeling of being trapped in domestic caretaking, having left her job and put aside her pursuits as a visual artist in order to stay at home and take care of her small toddler. With her husband away for work, the repetitiveness, exhaustion, and difficulties of motherhood take a surreal turn, as her instincts begin to manifest in canine form. Write a short story that begins similarly with the acknowledgment of an element of horror in something very mundane and common, perhaps an aspect of a relationship, a job, or milestone that isn’t often depicted in gory detail or a negative light. You might find that adding a touch of fantasy or dark comedy will help illuminate your perspective.

Lorrie Moore

Caption: 

“I’m not consciously balancing humor and tragedy, but I know that they do exist side by side.” In this Louisiana Channel interview, Lorrie Moore talks about the nature of jokes, the emotional and tonal range of her short stories, and reflects on the sense of repetition in her novel I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home (Knopf, 2023).

Genre: 

Poured Over: A. O. Scott

Caption: 

In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast with host Miwa Messer, New York Times Book Review critic at large A. O. Scott talks about his journey as a journalist and book critic, reflects on “instant classics” like Percival Everett’s novel James (Doubleday, 2024), and discusses how the experience of discovering books has changed because of the internet.

Asian American Literature Festival: Bamboo Ridge Press

Caption: 

In this 2024 Asian American Literature Festival event, hosts Cathy Song and Misty-Lynn Sanico introduce a reading from Bamboo Ridge Press authors Donald Carreira Ching, Scott Kikkawa, Wing Tek Lum, and Tamara Wong-Morrison.

Loved Ones

In Richard Curtis’s 2003 romantic comedy Love Actually, love is all around us—and it manifests in a wide range of ways for the characters in the film: romantic, platonic, familial, professional, and all sorts of in-between zones as well. The film, which has become a holiday classic, explores the lives of several characters and their loves, some of which are evenly balanced, while others are unrequited or lopsided; some which are new and some old. Write a short story that tells the story of multiple types of loving relationships, perhaps including both love that may seem straightforward or obvious, as well as love that is less so. When you have multiple types of love juxtaposed in one story, what do their similarities and differences illuminate?

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