Most writers know that suspense is the audience’s heightened anticipation about a work’s plot or conflict, particularly as it affects a character in whom the reader feels invested. But knowing is different than doing, and in this generative craft intensive, we’ll examine the techniques that will allow us not just to identify suspense, but also to create it in our own work. Through the discussion of terminology and the close reading of examples by such authors as Edward P. Jones, W.G. Sebald, and Muriel Barbery, we’ll explore how tension and compression tie not only to plot but also to character, and result in writing that makes the audience ravenous to keep reading.
KATHLEEN ROONEY is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press and a founding member of Poems While You Wait. She is the nationally bestselling author of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, as well as Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey and From Dust to Stardust. Her most recent poetry collection, O Western Wind, won the New Measure Poetry Prize and has just been released by Parlor Press and Free Verse Editions, and her most recent novel, Man Overboard!, was published by Gallery Books in July of 2026. She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay, and teaches English and creative writing at DePaul University.
