The term “unreliable narrator” suggests that unreliability is a special category and that most narrators (and people) are clear-sighted, rational, and honest. Even a fairly casual consideration of an ordinary day, let alone a crisis, suggests otherwise; there’s substantial narrative interest in the everyday chaos of the “normal” human mind. This class will give us a chance to consider the craft strategies writers use to convey characters’ perceptions, misperceptions, rationalizations, and levels of awareness. How do we signal whether (and to what extent) the reader is to accept a narrator’s or character’s view of reality? How can we create narrative tension by depicting what one character sees that another doesn’t? How do we allow readers to understand what the characters haven’t yet discovered? We will read and write together, and our handout will include excerpts from Salman Rushdie and Grace Paley stories.
Sarah Stone is the author of Hungry Ghost Theater, a finalist for the 38th annual Northern California Book Awards, and The True Sources of the Nile, and co-author, with Ron Nyren, of Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers. She has taught for UC Berkeley, the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, and Stanford Continuing Studies and has written for Korean public television, reported on human rights in Burundi, and looked after orphan chimpanzees at the Jane Goodall Institute. Her work has appeared in Image, Ploughshares, The Millions, Scoundrel Time, The Believer, 100 Word Story, CRAFT, Alta Journal online for the California Book Club, and elsewhere. Her new novel, Marriage to the Sea, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2026.
