Eat, Plot, Write: Food as Writing Fuel

“Food is powerful storytelling material, rich with memories, emotions, rituals and passions. It shines both in fiction and nonfiction; when carefully constructed, a restaurant review can read like a thriller, a memorable meal recap — like a romantic tale. Our relationship with food, cravings and tastes can support a poignant short story or a profound memoir,” says instructor Flora Tsapovsky.

Each week we will stir our creative appetites with exciting writing assignments and prompts, using food as a jumping board. We will dive into childhood flavors and shape them into essays, inspect the dinner party as narrative framework, consider hunger and the acts of eating and cooking as useful metaphors for writers (‘Spicing things up’! ‘Half-baked’!), and mobilize a favorite dish to construct an intimate tale. In the process, we will dig deeper into the connections between satiating hunger and creativity, explore the role different dishes plays in our lives and in society, and work together and individually to create the most meaningful and profound food-related stories.