The Short Novel with Ricardo Maldonado

​Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower transforms the early life of the Romantic poet Novalis into something strange and profound. In this masterclass, we'll work through Fitzgerald’s short novel as an example of the form, discussing how she makes a fictional life possible through brevity and suggestion, while holding onto honesty. We'll also examine larger questions about what the form of the short novel makes possible for writers of our own short fiction. 

​Please read the novel in full before the session.
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​Ricardo Alberto Maldonado was born and raised in Puerto Rico. A graduate of Tufts and Columbia University’s School of the Arts, he is the author of The Life Assignment (Four Way Books, 2020), a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, one of Remezcla’s Best Books by Latine or Latin American Authors, and Silver Medalist for the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award. He is also the translator of Dinapiera Di Donato’s Colaterales/Collateral (National Poetry Series / Akashic Books, 2013) and coeditor of Puerto Rico en mi corazón (Anomalous Press, 2019), a bilingual anthology that raised funds for grassroots recovery efforts in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.