Writing Psychology, Obsession, and Interiority with Austyn Wohlers (via Zoom)

Traditionally, the meat of fiction has us following characters as they move and act in the world around them in pursuit of their desires; their thoughts and feelings emerge shyly on the page as we see them react to the world around them. Recently, however, two writers whose work inverts these forms have emerged as favorites in the literary world: Clarice Lispector, whose lush, dark, and diamond-cut interior fictions describe interiority and alienation with the precision of a landscape painter, and Han Kang, whose poetic novels of femininity and alienation have recently won her the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Lispector and Kang’s work go against how many of us have learned to write stories: rather than taking agency in their own narrative, so many of their protagonists seem to shrink from the world, and space on the page is dedicated not to exerting their will upon the world but exploring how they think, feel, react and despair. How is interest and suspense maintained over narratives that take place largely in their protagonists’ mind? How is the fever pitch of obsessive narration maintained over the course of a novel? What makes a dark, psychological character study a compelling narrative? What makes this kind of prose compulsively readable?

In this class, we will practice writing fiction of intense interiority, studying the works of Lispector and Kang alongside others such as Kavan, Bernhard, Ferrante, Haushofer, Quin, and Hilst. We will dissect these fictions on the basis of their styles, plots, characters, and voices to break down how they are able to thwart the traditional rules of plot to create page-turning, obsessive interior narratives.

NB: This class will be taught on Zoom and will be capped at 15 students. Registrants will receive the Zoom link to the email address they use to register. It will arrive immediately after registration so please check your spam folder if you do not receive it. It will also be sent the day before class as a reminder. Please review the course policies page before registering for any classes. Please email ask @writerscenter.org with any questions.

Austyn Wohlers is a writer from Atlanta, currently living in New York. Her first novel Hothouse Bloom, called “the kind of debut that resets the bar for the field at large” by Blake Butler, is forthcoming from Hub City Press on August 26th, 2025. Her fiction, poetry, translation, and criticism have appeared in The Baffler, Guernica, The Massachusetts Review, The Kenyon Review, The Cincinnati Review, Asymptote, Joyland, and elsewhere. In Baltimore, she ran the Near Future reading series.