Author Rebecca Makkai Inspires Students at Masterclass and Reading
By ROXANE PARK
Rebecca Makkai guides students through a writing exercise during her fiction masterclass in the Elting Room.
Courtesy of @phillipsexeter
On Wednesday, April 3, acclaimed fiction writer Rebecca Makkai visited the Academy to teach a fiction masterclass and share her work at an evening reading, stunning students and faculty alike with her remarkable craft and insight.
Since her debut with the novel The Borrower in 2011, Makkai has published four novels and one full-length short story collection, as well as several individual short stories in publications such as The New Yorker, Tin House, Harper’s Magazine, and Ploughshares. Her third novel, The Great Believers, exploring the 1980s AIDS epidemic in Chicago, was awarded the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was a finalist for both the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
Some teachers, including Instructor in English Barbara Desmond, prepared their students for Makkai’s visit by exploring Makkai’s work throughout the term. “I had read The Great Believers and I Have Some Questions for You when they came out and enjoyed both, especially The Great Believers,” said Desmond. “It has been fun to discover the stories from Music for Wartime together with my students this term. These stories, which are fictional of course, but rooted in family history, open up new ways of approaching personal writing that are exciting for our students to play around with in their own work.”
“All of my sections read her short stories and really liked them,” Instructor in English Duncan Holcomb similarly shared. “Many of those stories are about living in totalitarian cultures. That’s an important focus since so many people are living in countries with increasingly dictatorial governments.”
During the lunch period on Wednesday, Makkai led a fiction masterclass for students in the Elting Room. With open enrollment but limited space, 30 students were able to attend the class and several remained on the waiting list.
The workshop was divided into two segments: a lecture and writing exercise, followed by a live Q&A session. In the Harkness-style lecture, Makkai highlighted the difference between the literary devices of scene and exposition. “Scene,” which the class decided was characterized by events, time, place, tension, and change, acts as the “bricks” within a story, while “exposition,” including interiority, background, description, foreshadowing, and analysis, as the “cement.” In order to construct a strong and sound story, the writer must first establish a balance between these two components.
Makkai also highlighted the importance of intention when including a scene, and challenged students to consider scenes in their own work through a wider lens.
“She did an amazing job at setting aside promoting the book in order to give an incredibly interactive workshop,” recounted senior Sarah Sargent in further detail. “We printed a story 30 seconds at a time, focusing on a different type of detail, such as action, internal thought, and metacognitive thinking. We ended up with one detailed scene each. Volunteers read out their stories, so I could hear just how effective different types and details of writing can be.”
Many student attendees appreciated how Makkai directed this interactive process. “The writing exercises she led us through during the workshop showed me how sensory, scene, and exposition all fit in like puzzle pieces to the best stories we read,” said prep Catherine Manley, and lower Avery Im added, “I liked how she helped us integrate different perspectives into our writing by showing us various exercises that she likes to use.”
The remaining time during the lunch masterclass was devoted to student questions about Makkai’s specific process and advice to aspiring writers.
“She talked a lot about how a character lies in their emotions and backstory, not just in the actions of the current scene,” reminisced upper Maya Clowes. “We also talked about the editing process. Makkai…explained how she starts with the big details, talking about what scenes to keep and cut, whether all her characters were vital to the story, if there was anything she needed to move around, and then she hones in [on] the flow, paragraph by paragraph, does she like her word choice, how does the story sound look on the page.”
“I think my favorite part about this workshop was [that it] outlined the many different types of detail that I can include in fiction writing, which might not be possible in films,” said Sargent. “I’m a fan of meaningful movies, and this workshop showed me just how much creativity writing offers. Every couple of minutes, I got many wacky fiction ideas that I’m excited to expand on!”
“Makkai’s emphasis on scene in her masterclass was a productive choice,” Desmond reflected. “I imagine that this class would have been directly useful to students who are working on personal narratives as well as those at work on fictional pieces.”
Many of Makkai’s answers to questions about drafting, editing, and publishing directly addressed such students. “Most importantly, she mentioned how she never gets things right the first time,” said Clowes. “She said that writing is a constant process and you can’t expect it to be perfect the first time or even the fourth time you write it. It’s about ‘throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks.’ Don’t expect yourself to write it perfectly. It can help to make a note that you know it’s bad to move on and come back to it.”
“I was so grateful to Rebecca Makkai for her kindness and generosity to our students,” agreed Instructor in English Jane Cadwell after attending Makkai’s workshop. “She made writing seem accessible and possible for every level of writing experience. I hope our students received that message form her words and writing exercises.”
Makkai’s visit was proposed and organized by the Class of 1945 Library and the English Department, as well as Instructor in English Tim Horvath. Makkai and Horvath are old friends from their shared time at a summer writing program hosted in New Hampshire where they wrote a new complete short story every Tuesday and Thursday for many weeks.
Horvath referenced Makkai’s unique creations and style from that summer in his introduction to her reading at 7:30 p.m. in the Assembly Hall, praising the irreplicable nature of her work: “I’d like to think that if AI ever becomes conscious, it will say something like, ‘That Rebecca Makkai drove me crazy. She flummoxes the algorithms.’”
“Makkai-ness,” Horvath continued, “is impossible to pin down, but foolishly, I will try: sharpness of observation; boundless curiosity; the attention to and love for language you’d expect from the child of linguists and poets; the sense that history is all around us, not back there in the rearview mirror; an empathy that reveals humanity in all of its dimensions. Plus, she’s hilarious.”
Following this warm introduction, Makkai immersed the audience for an hour-long reading, during which she shared her standalone piece “A Story for Your Daughters, a Story for Your Sons” and two excerpts from her most recent novel, I Have Some Questions for You. The latter work is a murder mystery set at a boarding school in New Hampshire much like the Academy, and it was published in early 2023.
Sargent described how the structure of Makkai’s reading was helpful to those unfamiliar with her work. “During the assembly, I loved how she utilized it as mostly a reading: explaining and reading multiple chapters, providing context, which, for somebody who didn’t read her book in class, was incredibly accommodating.”
For example, though Makkai skipped from the first chapter of I Have Some Questions for You to the twelfth, her explanation of the premise of the novel ensured that attendees were not left confused about the plot of the sixty pages between them. Instead, the chosen excerpts allowed them to focus solely on her fascinating analysis of video-evidence for the murder case and a specious memory from the narrator’s high school days.
About Makkai’s unique command over language, Cadwell noticed that “She conveys so much with such clarity. I have not taught any of her work, but I have read I Have Some Questions for You, which I loved for many reasons. The terrain of the novel is so familiar and so exact. She writes with subtle nuance that at times I forgot I was reading as opposed to just living my New Hampshire boarding school life (aside from the murder, of course).”
“By attending her workshop before the reading, I was able to discern how the writing styles and techniques fit into her work,” said Manley. “[I] was impressed that, in practicing writing through this nature, Makkai was able to craft stories each with their own unique and captivating journey,”
After the formal reading, Makkai opened the floor to questions from the audience. “She also answered audience questions with honesty, acknowledging both obvious and non-obvious answers,” recalled Sargent. “My favorite part was in response to an audience member when she talked about writing from different identities. [For example, in The Great Believers, she writes] about the HIV pandemic in the 70s or 80s from the perspective of gay men, and talked about the research she conducted and moral rationale for book versus short fiction writing.”
“I also liked how she taught us that you need multiple perspectives to truly create an outstanding novel,” echoed Im.
Makkai ended an eventful day at the Academy by meeting students and signing their books in the foyer of the Academy Building. Her incredible work and generous advice inspired everyone who had a chance to attend, as they now eagerly hope for her return to the Academy in the coming years.
