Skip to main content

For Monday: Hudak, The Witch Trap



REMEMBER: No class on Friday, since me and a few of the students from class will be traveling to OSU for an English grad school event. In the meantime, please read "The Witch Trap" for Monday's class, where we'll discuss the novel way it tells a story rooted in fantasy and history. As you read, here are some ideas to ponder:

* What does it mean for an object (like the shoe) to become "more than it was"? How do objects, even without magic, transform in this way over time?

* Why does the narrative's perspective change so often, and what ties each perspective together, even though they're not otherwise related (and they don't know each other)?

* Why do you think the narrative is sandwiched between the third-person account of Elizabeth, whose contractor finds the 'witch shoe' in the floorboards?

* Concealed Shoes are a REAL thing! Check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_shoes

* What does it mean when Elizabeth reflects that the idea of trapping witches ni shoes "would have required both repetition and belief in order to work" (213)? 

* According to the story, why did witch hunting and witch paranoia become so prevalent in England and in pre-Revolutionary America?

* How are all the characters in the story a bit like witches, even though few of them strictly are (other than the coven visited by the skeptical magazine reporter)?

* The coven of witches claims that you can change history by merely rewriting it. How do you think they propose to do this?

* LunaBelle says that the danger of adult thinking is trying to shove everything into a box, "Even if the box doesn't fit. Even if you damage the thing getting it inside" (218). Besides shoving witches in shoes, what else could this refer to the in the 'real' world?

* We learn the original history of the shoe Elizabeth finds toward the end of the story. Why is this significant? What does it add to Elizabeth's story? 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Examples of Cover Letters and Manuscript Format (for Story #1)

  SAMPLE COVER LETER   Dear Connor, Jessika, Kara, or Other Editor, (you can find the editors' names on the website)  Please accept my story science-fiction story, "The Real Mona Lisa," for consideration in a future issue of Chatterbox Literary. The story is 6,051 words and has not been submitted elsewhere or published previously. (always give the genre, title, word count, and if you're sending it to other publications at the same time).  I am a professor of English at a small university in Oklahoma, where I teach classes in writing (mostly to people who hate writing), British literature, and the Humanities. My stories have most recently appeared in After Dinner Conversation, Allegory, and The Lorelei Signal. (if you don't have any publications, you can just leave this blank, or add more of your bio--something colorful and interesting without being too cute)  Thank you, Joshua Grasso SAMPLE MANUSCRIPT FORMAT Joshua Grasso      ...
Post a Comment
Read more

For Monday: Best American SF/F, Forward and Introduction

For Monday's class, read the Forward by John Joseph Adams, and the brief Introduction by the guest editor (and famous author) Nnedi Okorafor. These are both pretty short and are NOT stories, but they explain two important things: * How stories are chosen for a genre publication like this one: both where the stories come from and what the criteria for choosing them are * What genre means to both writers, and especially Okorafor, who writes speculative fiction. We also get an insight into how she markets her work, and whether or not genre distinctions are all that important to her.  I won't give you any questions or quizzes over this reading, but we will talk about it in detail on Monday, and some of these ideas may factor into future writings in one way or another.  
Post a Comment
Read more

Welcome to the Course! Now Get Writing...

Welcome to the blog site for our Fall 2026 Creative Writing: Genre course, focusing on writing what is popularly known as "speculative fiction," which comprises genres such as science-fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and their various subgenres. The goal of this class is to allow you to experiment with different styles and approaches to writing fiction, using the lens of the fantastic and the bizarre. Don't worry if you've never done this before, or if you don't even read sci-fi or fantasy literature--you don't need to! The point of this class, as in most college classes, is to grow, experiment, and have fun while doing so.  The guilding quote for this class, borrowed from the great speculative fiction writer, Ursula K. Le Guin is:  “The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words . The [writer] says in words what cannot be said in words” (Ursula K. LeGuin, Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness )....
Post a Comment
Read more