You have an intriguing premise for your short story and a great protagonist. Maybe you already know how your story will end, or how hard that middle part will hit. But now you’re faced with the real work of giving your fictional people inner lives — of writing emotion in a way that isn’t brittle or hammy. How do you convey passion without descending into schmaltz, or explain-without-explaining the dynamic between two people? How do you show grief? Perhaps your style is down-beat, minimalist — so how will you express the soul of your characters without sacrificing that cool tone? Is it ever possible for “edgy” and “happy” to co-exist? In this fun, irreverent two-hour class with author and editor Melanie McGee Bianchi, we’ll sift through good and bad examples of emotion in literature, considering excerpts from contemporary commercial and literary fiction and elite classics. Let’s figure out how to make our readers feel what we’re feeling.

Melanie McGee Bianchi is the author of The Ballad of Cherrystoke & Other Stories, a collection of short fiction published in 2022 by Blackwater Press and distributed in the U.S. and the UK. The title story and the book received national acclaim (recognized respectively in the Summer Prize Issue of the Mississippi Review and as a “Distinguished Favorite” in the Short Stories category of the NYC Big Book Awards). Other stories in the book have appeared in print literary magazines from Atlanta to Ireland. Melanie has worked as a lifestyle journalist in Asheville, NC, for more than 25 years, and is currently the editor of three magazines: Asheville Made, Bold Life, and Carolina Home + Garden. She has published humor essays, poetry, and hundreds of feature articles. Melanie has received a Pushcart Nomination for poetry, was a finalist for the Black Warrior Review Chapbook Poetry Prize, and holds a Gold Award for special-section editing from the International Festivals & Events Association.