Disrupting Realism: Magic, Humor, and other Disturbances
Presented by Electric Literature and Picador

To celebrate the disruptive themes in Parakeet (out in paperback June 1st), Marie-Helene Bertino will offer a free online master class on how to write, edit, teach, and consider works that break the laws of physics in fiction. How do we imagine and implicate supernatural elements? How can we disrupt our own understanding of reality to become more visible to ourselves? While Bertino will focus on writing magic and the uncanny, stopping in Sesame Street-style will be some of her favorite disruptors, including Mira Jacob,  Mitchell S. Jackson,  Kristiana Kahakauwila, Tracy O'Neill, and Helen Phillips, who will share how these themes manifest in their own writing practice. Meant to offer joy and inspiration, this class can be enjoyed by writers at any level. Bring your darlings and join us!

Registration is free, and a replay will be available for two days following the event.

*ASL interpretation will be provided 

Participant bios:

Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of the novels Parakeet (NY Times Editors' Choice) and 2 a.m. at The Cat's Pajamas (NPR Best Books 2014), and the story collection Safe as Houses (Iowa Short Fiction Award). Her work has been translated into eight languages, and has received The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Fellowship in Cork, Ireland, The O. Henry Prize, The Pushcart Prize and two special mentions, fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook Writers Colony, The Center For Fiction NYC, and Sewanee Writers Conference. Her work has twice been featured on NPR's "Selected Shorts" program. A former editor for One Story and Catapult, she has taught fiction in America and abroad, including Institute for American Indian Arts and University of Cork, and currently teaches in the MFA programs of NYU and The New School. In 2020 she was the Distinguished Kittredge Visiting Writer in University of Montana's MFA. Her fourth book, the novel Beautyland, is forthcoming from FSG. More info: www.mariehelenebertino.com

Mitchell S. Jackson’s debut novel The Residue Years received wide critical praise. Jackson’s honors include the Whiting Award, the Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence, and the Creative Capital Award, as well as honors from  the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, the Lannan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, PEN America, and TED. Jackson’s memoir-in-essays Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family was named a best book of the year by fifteen publications. His next novel—John of Watts—will be published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Jackson covers race and culture as the first Black columnist for Esquire Magazine and teaches creative writing at the University of Chicago. 

Helen Phillips is the author of five books, including, most recently, the novel The Need, a nominee for the 2019 National Book Award, a New York Times Notable Book of 2019, and a TIME Magazine Top 10 Book of 2019. Her collection Some Possible Solutions received the 2017 John Gardner Fiction Book Award. Her novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat, a New York Times Notable Book of 2015, was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic and the New York Times, and on Selected Shorts. 

Mira Jacob is a novelist, memoirist, illustrator, and cultural critic. Her graphic memoir Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversationswas shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award, and her novel The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing was named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus Reviews, The Boston Globe, Goodreads, Bustle, and The Millions. She is an Assistant Professor in the Creative Writing Program at The New School and a founding faculty member of the MFA Program at Randolph College. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, documentary filmmaker Jed Rothstein, and their son.

Tracy O'Neill is the author of The Hopeful, one of Electric Literature's Best Novels of 2015, and Quotients, a New York Times New & Noteworthy Book, TOR Editor's Choice, & Literary Hub Favorite Book of 2020. In 2015, she was named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, long-listed for the Flaherty-Dunnan Prize, and was a Narrative Under 30 finalist. In 2012, she was awarded the Center for Fiction's Emerging Writers Fellowship. Her short fiction was distinguished in the Best American Short Stories 2016 and earned a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2017. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, the New Yorker, LitHub, BOMB, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Believer, The Literarian, the Austin Chronicle, New World Writing, Narrative, Scoundrel Time, Guernica, Bookforum, Electric Literature, Grantland, Vice, The Guardian, VQR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Catapult. She holds an MFA program from the City College of New York; and an MA, an MPhil, and a PhD from Columbia University. While editor-in-chief of the literary journal Epiphany, she established the Breakout 8 Writers Prize with the Authors Guild. She currently teaches at Vassar College.

Kristiana Kahakauwila is a hapa writer of kanaka maoli, German, and Norwegian descent. Her first book, This is Paradise: Stories (Hogarth 2013), takes as its heart the people and landscapes of contemporary Hawai'i.  Kristiana is an Assistant Professor at University of Hawai`i at Mānoa, and also teaches in the Low-Residency MFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is currently at work on a novel set on the island of Maui.

Disrupting Realism Master Class with Marie-Helene Bertino