As the musician, actor, painter, and all-around artistic vagabond John Lurie once said about making art: “See what it gives you.” In this class, we’ll go through and discuss the process of revision for publication. We’ll cover and discuss wholeness, cohesiveness, exactitude, clarity, excavating material, and, perhaps most importantly, staying true to your artistic visions and the possibilities they may still contain.
Additionally, we’ll consider and discuss what various editors have to say about the endlessly exciting, if occasionally sticky, matter of putting your work out into the world. The class will also include a Q&A.
MICHAEL ZAPATA is a founding editor of MAKE Literary Magazine and the author of the novel The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, winner of the 2020 Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, finalist for the 2020 Heartland Booksellers Award in Fiction, and a Best Book of the Year for NPR, the A.V. Club, Los Angeles Public Library, and BookPage, among others. He is on the faculty of StoryStudio Chicago and the MFA faculty of Northwestern University. As a public-school educator, he taught literature and writing in high schools servicing drop-out students. He currently lives in Chicago with his family.
