How to End a Short Story? Lessons from Children's Picture Books
Children's picture books can teach us about the many forms satisfying short stories can take. We'll examine several picture books as examples, discussing common story shapes with a focus on how authors begin, build tension, and especially, end a short tale. Sheffer will share examples of short fiction for further reading, and exercises that participants can use to "try on" these story shapes to enrich their own writing.
Instructor: Marguerite (Maggie) Sheffer is a writer who lives in New Orleans. She is a Professor of Practice at Tulane University, where she teaches courses in design thinking and speculative fiction as tools for social change. Formerly, she taught English at the East Oakland School of the Arts, Castlemont High School, Life Academy, and GW Carver High School.
Her debut short story collection, The Man in the Banana Trees, was selected by judge Jamil Jan Kochai for the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and was published in 2024.
Maggie is a founding member of Third Lantern Lit, a local writing collective, and the Nautilus and Wildcat Writing Groups. She received her MFA from Randolph College. She was a 2023 Veasna So Scholar in Fiction at The Adroit Journal, and was selected as a top-twenty-five finalist for Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers. Her story “Tiger on My Roof” was a finalist for the 2024 Chautauqua Janus Prize, which awards emerging writers’ short fiction with “daring formal and aesthetic innovations that upset and reorder readers’ imaginations.”
