The Makery: Character to Conflict: Building from the Ground Up with Jacinda Townsend
So many of the characters dancing in the literary ballroom have sealed themselves indelibly into our memories: they’ve shocked us as much as they’ve thrilled us, and parked us on cliffs of yearning as we reflect on the human condition. In this workshop, we’ll talk about conjuring those dazzling people from the ground up, from quirk to conflict. Participants will be encouraged to write character sketches and scenes to aid in developing more dynamic protagonists and villains.
Course will meet virtually 10:00am-12:00pm EST
Saturday April 4
Saturday April 11
Saturday April 18
About the Instructor
Jacinda Townsend is the author of several works of Kentucky-set fiction, including Trigger Warning (Graywolf, 2025) and Mother Country (Graywolf, 2022), winner of the 2023 Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. Townsend‘s first novel, Saint Monkey (Norton, 2014), winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for historical fiction, was an Honor Book of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. A former broadcast journalist and elected official, Townsend teaches in the MFA program at Brown University.
