Community Class: Writing the Local Weird with Andy Duncan

Every town has its secrets, legends, and quirks—those odd stories and unexplained phenomena that linger on the edges of history and memory. Join Andy Duncan, Six-Week Workshop Instructor, award-winning author, and writing professor for an exploration of how to uncover and write about the "weirdness" in your own backyard.

In this class, you’ll learn how to:

- Conduct research into local folklore, urban legends, and regional histories.

- Identify the narrative potential in unusual events and traditions.

- Find inspiration in your surroundings

Through engaging examples from his own work and practical tips, you’ll leave with the tools to turn your local landscape into a rich source of story ideas. Whether it’s a ghost story rooted in real events, a fantastic retelling inspired by regional traditions, or a just better understanding of hometown history, this class will help you find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

This class meets on May 10, 2025, 10-11 am. 

This class meets once for one hour in webinar format. Video/microphones are not required to participate. No advance preparation is required for this class.

About the Instructor:

Boisterous, humorous, fantastical, and fabulist, Andy Duncan’s fiction has been honored with a Nebula Award, a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and three World Fantasy Awards, the most recent for Wakulla Springs, a 2013 Tor.com novella co-written with Ellen Klages. His third collection, An Agent of Utopia: New and Selected Stories, was published in 2018 by Small Beer Press. A South Carolina native and Clarion West graduate, he teaches writing in the Maryland mountains at Frostburg State University, which promoted him to full professor in 2019.

Website 

This event will be held in Zoom. By registering for this class, you agree to follow the Clarion West Code of Conduct and Zoom policies. 

About Our Community Classes:
 

Community classes are offered at low cost and with additional sliding scale options to enable access to high-quality writing instruction, regardless of your economic circumstance. Please choose the ticketing price that best supports your circumstances.

Limited Free Seating: 

We offer a percentage of seats in every class to People of the Global Majority (Asian, Black, African, Latina/o/x, Middle Eastern, Indigenous, Pacific Islander, and/or have been racialized as 'ethnic minorities') for free, regardless of financial need. 

Eligible folks should complete this form to enter the lottery for free seats.  If a seat is available, we will email you 7-10 days before the class begins. For more information, see our equity and inclusion policies.