The Art of Retelling Existing Short Fiction

Retelling old stories has long been revered in literary fiction. Think of Angela Carter's feminist retellings of classic fairy tales in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, or Tom Stoppard's retelling of the story of Hamlet's childhood friends in his play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Or Lauren Groff's repurposing of Greek mythology in her novel, Fates and Furies. The idea of turning the old into the new has long been a practice that artists of all stripes have used to create. In this OnDemand Webinar from our Annual Short Story Virtual Conference, instructor Blake Sanz examines modern and classic examples of how stories get retold, and explores ways that seeing your own work through the lens of related, existing stories can open up possibilities for how you compose.

Blake Sanz’s The Boundaries of Their Dwelling won the 2021 Iowa Short Fiction Award, selected by Brandon Taylor. Recent stories from the collection are available in Joyland, American Short Fiction, and Hypertext. He teaches writing at the University of Denver. Follow him on Twitter @BlakeSanz.