Writing Workshops

An Answer to Any Problem: Generating Work by Reading Lydia Davis with James Yeh

$345

4 sessions

Out of stock

Once a week Wednesdays, 6:00 pm EDT - 8:00 pm EDT August 6 to September 3, 2025

The Center for Fiction

“For any problem you have,” Lydia Davis writes in Essays One, “there will be an answer in the close analysis of one or more good writers.” This four-week workshop aims to uncover radical, imaginative, and accessible approaches to generating new work drawn from, or related to, Davis’s good example. Using models and guidance from Collected Stories and Essays One—as well as an independent visit to Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where Davis’s illuminating notebooks, revised manuscripts, and other papers are housed—participants will be emboldened to apply these techniques to their own work and literary practice. Students will also learn to keep a daily writing journal.

Course Outline:

Week One will focus on the art of journal-keeping, observing the world, observing the behavior of animals, others, and ourselves, and overheard conversations. Drawing from Lydia Davis’s craft essay “Thirty Recommendations for Good Writing Habits,” her suggested examples of the notebooks of Franz Kafka and artist Eugène Delacroix, and an essay on keeping a notebook by the award-winning journalist Ben Mauk, we will apply these approaches to journal-keeping to the outside world, where we will begin generating explosive new work from real-life observations. Students will also, drawing from Davis’s example, take a self-inventory of their interests. Finally, students will schedule a visit to the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where we will get a closer look at Davis’s papers and working process.
Week Two will focus on the art of revision and editing oneself, drawing on further readings from Davis’s Essays One and Samuel R. Delany’s “Some Notes for the Intermediate and Advanced Creative Writing Student.” Students will bring in a notebook entry or passage from a longer work as a testing ground for new approaches to revision. Students will have the opportunity to receive immediate instructor feedback and an instructor-led discussion of the work’s strengths and possibilities.
Week Three will focus on inventive fiction formats, drawing from stories in Davis’s Collected Stories, including “Letter to a Funeral Parlor,” “Dog and Me,” “The Old Dictionary,” “A Man from Her Past,” “Kafka Cooks Dinner,” “What You Can Learn About a Baby,” and others. Using Davis’s examples as models, students will try their hand at stories. Like the week before, students will also have the opportunity to share favorite recent notebook entries or revisions for immediate feedback.
Week Four will focus on process through our under-the-hood investigations of Davis’s papers at Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and a candid discussion with the instructor on making a life as a writer. As ever, students will share favorite recent notebook entries, or revisions, from the month for immediate feedback. Students will also revisit their self-inventories and together we will come up with next steps, tailored to where you are and where you intend to go.

Level: Intended for Intermediate to Advanced, but all levels welcome

This course is held in person at The Center for Fiction. Please note this course will not meet on August 20th.

Led by

James Yeh

James Yeh

James Yeh’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York magazine, McSweeney’s Quarterly, the Guardian, the Believer, the Drift, NOON, and Tin House, and was cited as notable in The Best American Essays 2022 and The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011. He was named an Emerging Writer Fellow at The Center for Fiction in 2011, a writer-in-residence at the Hub City Writers Project in 2014, and a fellow at MacDowell in 2011 and 2024. A former editor at McSweeney’s Quarterly, the Believer, and VICE, he has edited stories anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2024, the 2024 O. Henry Prize Winners, and The Best American Travel Writing 2022. He currently teaches writing at Columbia University, and lives in Brooklyn.

Photo Credit: Jessica Parks

About this series

Writing Workshops

We strive to make our classes the most inviting and rewarding available, offering an intimate environment to study with award-winning, world-class writers. Each class is specially designed by the instructor, so whether you’re a fledgling writer or an MFA graduate polishing your novel, you’ll find a perfect fit here.

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