Karen Rile is the author of Winter Music (Little, Brown), a novel set in Philadelphia, and numerous works of fiction and creative nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in literary journals such as The Southern Review, American Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Other Voices, Superstition Review, Tishman Review, and has been shortlisted among The Best American Short Stories. Karen has published articles and essays in The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and others. She is the founding and chief editor of Cleaver and the Director of Cleaver Workshops.
Karen lives in Philadelphia and teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MFA from Bennington College, and a certificate in satire from The Second City. She is also the mom of four adult daughters with more interesting careers than her own: an aerialist, a glass artist, a violist, and a playwright.
Follow her on Instagram @whatkindofdog.
FIRST TO THIRD: A Writing Tip by Karen Rile
FIRST TO THIRD Here's the truth: Your first instinct is your best. Write the draft the way it comes to you. Maybe your story comes out naturally in first person. And you nail it, fluently: the voice, the character, the plot. Brava! Here's the rub: You show your draft to trusted readers and—what the heck?—they don't get it. This narrator is too unlikeable to care about, they complain. They confuse the narrator's motivations with the story's intent. They miss your carefully laid irony. Should you fire your writers' workshop and look for a ...
SOLVING FOR X: A Writing Tip by Karen Rile
SOLVING FOR X Where did this prompt come from? I've used it in my Penn classes for more than twenty years. I've personalized and fancied it, but I don't think the original idea was mine. This week I paged through my personal library of books on writing and teaching and scoured the internet, but I cannot find the author. If you recognize it, drop me a line! Solving for X creates a detailed and seemingly capricious to-do list that, like all great prompts, frees you from the prison of the empty page. Not quite as ...