Magical Realism is a literary style that weaves the threads of the real and the imaginary into a depiction of everyday life. The stories are almost believable, just on that fine edge where you really want to think them possible. The setting is often a world that’s recognizably ours. The characters are often ordinary people who don’t always seem to notice when their lives take on an element of the extraordinary.

In this course we will discuss the short works not only of the more famous practitioners – Marquez, Borges and Lispector, but also many others you may be surprised to see included – Gogol, Henry James, Virginia Woolf and Kafka as well as D. H. Lawrence, Nabokov, Fuentes, Faulkner, Welty, Cheever and John Barthelme.

Format: This course will explore how all these diverse writers use elements of Magical Realism to tell their stories in the context of their time and place. Class members will choose one or more stories from the anthology for their class discussion. Presenters will also have the option of choosing a story outside the anthology if available online in a pdf format. Presenters should plan for 15-20 minutes and provide questions for discussion.

Resources/Expenses: Magical Realist Fiction - An Anthology, David Young and Keith Hollaman, eds. Available from Amazon $18.42 new or $5.24 used. Additional stories provided in pdf format.