Beyond 'Story Mountain': Global Approaches to Inspire New WritingSpecial EventVirtual
Wednesday, Mar 19, 2025Wednesday, Mar 26, 2025Wednesday, Apr 02, 2025Wednesday, Apr 09, 2025
5:00–6:15 PM EST
A 4-Part Online Workshop for English, ENL, Social Studies & World Language Teachers
Presented in collaboration with Words Without Borders, the premiere destination for a global literary conversation.
Does every story need a central conflict? Around the world, the answer is a resounding “No!” In this course, we’ll find inspiration in East Asian kishōtenketsu, non-linear Nahuatl narrative, and circular stories from Port-au-Prince to Moscow to Mexico City.
Participants will come away knowing how to use three global story structures, and with at least one completed story using a new form. (If you keep resolving to write but can’t find the time or energy, join us!)
In four virtual sessions, we’ll explore such topics as:
- How to create a twist ending
- When to use fragmentation
- Ways to engage readers in a story
This highly interactive, reading- and writing-intensive mini-course will be facilitated by Nadia Kalman, a fiction writer and the global education director for the international literary organization Words Without Borders; and Maggie Vlietstra, translator from the French and WWB’s education program coordinator.
This course is open to any teachers across the world anywhere, but space is limited!
CTLE credit available for public school teachers
$30 for Academy Fellows* and Words without Borders subscribers**
$40 for non-Fellows
*You are a Fellow of The Academy for Teachers if you have been accepted to, and attended, an in-person master class.
**You are a Words Without Borders Campus newsletter subscriber if you have been subscribed to our newsletter for two weeks or more when you register (https://wwb-campus.org/subscribe).
Nadia Kalman & Maggie Vlietstra
Nadia Kalman is the global education director for Words Without Borders, helping to bring eye-opening global literature and culture into classrooms (wwb-campus.org). A former teacher and administrator, Nadia is also a writer. She received a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and is currently at work on her second novel. She holds a BA in comparative literature from Yale, an MA in instructional technology and media from Teachers College at Columbia, and an EdM in educational leadership from Bank Street.
Maggie Vlietstra is the education program coordinator at Words Without Borders and a translator from French. She holds a BA in French and theater from Barnard College and an MFA in literary translation from French from Boston University, where she received the 2022 Shmuel Traum Translation Prize. Her translations have been published by La Piccioletta Barca and Trilingual Press.