Reading is arguably the most crucial practice for any serious writer. In this course, you will “reverse engineer” acclaimed short stories to determine how and why they work. You will use these stories as lenses into key aspects of effective fiction (dialogue, plotting, voice, character, etc.) The course will help you to identify the key features of various distinctive prose styles, and you will participate in guided writing exercises inspired by those styles.
Winter term:
Wednesdays, Feb. 11 to March 25 (6 weeks, no class March 4) 6:30 – 8 p.m. $135 (+ HST)
Where: Charlotte Street Arts Centre (732 Charlotte St, Fredericton, NB E3B 1M5, Canada)
When: Jan 29, 2026 to Mar 5, 2026, Thursdays at 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. AST
This course will engage with horror literature’s legacies and unique capacities for catharsis, allegory, and personal expression. We will discuss what scares us and investigate the psychology of fear within the context of fiction, digging into the nuts-and-bolts processes of generating fear in the reader. We will explore the wide range of horror’s sub-genres and aesthetic possibilities, looking at tropes, traditions, and metaphors as opportunities for creative openings rather than restrictions. We will discuss the importance of atmosphere, point-of-view, and convincing characterization. Drawing on insights and fiction by some of horror literature’s most important and exciting figures, we will dive into the genre with a focus on craft and technique.
In this interview, we chat with Sarah Bernstein about contemplation, finding time for writing, capturing the rush of language, and so much more.
Sarah Bernstein is the author of two novels, The Coming Bad Days and Study for Obedience, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She is from Montreal and lives in the Scottish Highlands.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
Hysteric; Whore – Nelly Arcan
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
The Moonstone; The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
“A Mown Lawn” – Lydia Davis
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life – Ruth Franklin
The Book of Questions – Edmond Jabès
The Haunting of Hill House; “The Lottery”; The Sundial; We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
The Place of Shells – Mai Ishizawa
In the Wake: On Blackness and Being – Christina Sharpe
Fredericton’s monthly reading series, ‘The Catch-Up,’ curated and hosted by acclaimed writer Fawn Parker, returns with readings by local authors Alison Taylor, Chuck Bowie & Mike Thorn!
The reading will take place here at the bookshop on Sunday, January 26th, 2025, @ 3pm.
Alison Taylor (they/them) is a writer, editor, and filmmaker based in Fredericton. Taylor’s short stories have appeared in various journals, and their debut novel Aftershock, published by HarperCollins Canada, received the Atlantic Book Awards John and Margaret Savage First Book Award (Fiction), and was shortlisted for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. They received the 2024 Douglas Adams Richards Prize for Fiction for their work-in-progress, Confessions of a Binge Drinker (working title). They have edited a hundred-plus hours of television and many award-winning short films and music videos, and their own experimental films have screened at festivals internationally. They currently work in the editorial department at Goose Lane Editions and as a freelance editor of both books and film and video, and are working to complete a draft while two cats yell at them and a 70-pound boxer whines in their face.
Mike Thorn is a SSHRC-funded doctoral candidate in the Department of English (Creative Writing) at the University of New Brunswick. He is the author of Shelter for the Damned, Darkest Hours, and Peel Back and See. His writing has appeared in anthologies, magazines, and podcasts, including NoSleep, Vastarien, In Review Online, and American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper. He co-hosts Craftwork, a writing-themed podcast, with Miriam Richer. Website: mikethornwrites.com.
Chuck Bowie is both a writer and an author, with thirteen books/novels published and one just underway. While he enjoys writing mysteries: Suspense-Thrillers and Cozy Mysteries, he also writes short stories. All of his books are well-reviewed, and he has sat on the boards of the Writers’ Federation of NB, The Writers’ Union of Canada, is a Fellow of the Kingsbrae International Residency for the Arts, as well as being acknowledged as a member of the Miramichi Literary Trail. His thriller series chronicles the adventures of Donovan, an international thief for hire, while his cozy series (written as Alexa Bowie) follows the adventures of the owner of an arts centre as Emma solves the crimes that swirl around her centre: The Old Manse. http://www.chuckbowie.ca
“The Charlotte Street Arts Centre and the Fredericton Public Library are teaming up for a unique evening of storytelling inspired by our collective love for literature, libraries, and books of all shapes and sizes.
This special evening event will feature personal stories from a cast of New Brunswick writers including Ambrose Albert, Joce Anderson, Chuck Bowie, Ryan Griffith, Jordan Thretheway, Joanne LeBlanc-Haley, Eric Hill, Philip Lee, Paul McAllister, Thandiwe McCarthy, Fawn Parker, Mike Thorn, Jacques Poitras, and Sue Sinclair with all proceeds going to support both the Charlotte Street Arts Centre and the Fredericton Public Library.”
This course will engage with horror literature’s legacies and unique capacities for catharsis, allegory, and personal expression. We will discuss what scares us and investigate the psychology of fear within the context of fiction, digging into the nuts-and-bolts processes of generating fear in the reader. We will explore the wide range of horror’s subgenres and aesthetic possibilities, looking at tropes, traditions, and metaphors as opportunities for creative openings rather than restrictions. We will discuss the importance of atmosphere, point-of-view, and convincing characterization. Drawing on insights and fiction by some of horror literature’s most important and exciting figures, we will dive into the genre with a focus on craft and technique.
Date: Tuesdays, Oct. 29 – Dec. 3 Time: 7-9 p.m. Location: Community Room (Charlotte Street Arts Centre) Length: Six week Cost: $15 Max. class size: 12
In this interview, we chat with Mark Anthony Jarman about hockey fiction, deadwood words, finding stories in newspaper clippings, and so much more.
Mark Anthony Jarman is the author of Touch Anywhere to Begin, Czech Techno, Knife Party at the Hotel Europa, My White Planet, 19 Knives, New Orleans Is Sinking, Dancing Nightly in the Tavern, and the travel book Ireland’s Eye. Burn Man, published in 2023 by Biblioasis, was an Editors Choice with the New York Times. He was an acquisitions editor for Oberon Press, and introduced many new writers through the Coming Attractions series. He is also the editor of Best Canadian Stories 2023. His novel Salvage King Ya! is on Amazon.ca’s list of 50 Essential Canadian Books and is the number one book on Amazon’s list of best hockey fiction. Widely published in Canada, the US, Europe, and Asia, Jarman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a Yaddo fellow, has taught at the University of Victoria, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the University of New Brunswick. He is also co-editor of the literary journal CAMEL.
Book and poems mentioned in this episode:
Flowers of Evil – Charles Baudelaire
Study for Obedience – Sarah Bernstein
Cathedral – Raymond Carver
The Stories of John Cheever – John Cheever
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The U.S.A. Trilogy – Jon Dos Passos
Literary Theory: An Introduction – Terry Eagleton
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” – T. S. Eliot
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Attack of the Copula Spiders: Essays on Writing – Douglas Glover
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
Dubliners; Ulysses – James Joyce
The Incognito Lounge and Other Poems; Jesus’ Son; Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond – Denis Johnson
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
Panama – Thomas McGuane
Dance of the Happy Shades – Alice Munro
Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle; Lolita; Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
On the first episode of Craftwork, guest Meghan Kemp-Gee talks about poetry, screenwriting, comics, and so much more.
Meghan is the author of The Animal in the Room (Coach House Books, 2023), as well as three poetry chapbooks, What I Meant to Ask, Things to Buy in New Brunswick, and More. She also co-created the webcomic Contested Strip, recently adapted as a graphic novel, One More Year. She is a PhD candidate at UNB and currently lives in North Vancouver BC.
Mike Thorn 