Literature & Writing: Monica Ferrell
Meet faculty member Monica Ferrell, who is teaching Fiction: Beginnings & Endings as part of the Bennington Early College Program.
Bennington Early College Program: Literature and Writing
Fiction: Beginnings & Endings
Taught by Monica Ferrell
Wednesdays 4:30-6:30 pm EST | September 8, 15, 22, 29
Q&A with Monica Ferrell
What excites you about teaching Fiction: Beginnings & Endings?
What excites me most about teaching this course is unpacking with students the hints and patterns and moods and little mysteries embedded in the opening passages of works of fiction.
Whenever we read, we're taking in tons of data, and as we move through the subsequent pages of stories and novels, we keep sifting them for those clues that matter. Everyone in the class always picks up something different, which makes the conversation so rich and interesting!
This is a course in noticing, in realizing just how much you already know when you read.
What do you hope students will gain from this course?
I think this is a course in noticing, in realizing just how much you already know when you read.
My hope is that students come away with a new confidence in their observations about how storytelling operates, so that they will be able to apply techniques they discover in this course to their own writing of fiction.
What are you reading right now?
I just finished reading an oldie—David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens—and this summer have slowly been working through the novels of Jennifer Egan, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad.
What publications have you had recently?
In summer 2020, I had two poems about the pandemic lockdown published in the Yale Review: "Provision" and "The Hour Between Dog and Wolf."
About the Bennington Early College Program
The Bennington Early College Program is a suite of one-credit online courses for high school, gap year, and college students. Programs are offered in Literature and Writing, Social and Environmental Justice, and Politics, Power, and Society.
Bennington Early College Program course fees are refundable for students who later apply to Bennington's undergraduate program.