Maya Kucherskaya at a Meeting for Readers and a Creative Writing Workshop at the Yeltsin Center

Academic Supervisor of the Creative Writing MA Programme explains how to turn reality into fiction

Creative Writing Workshop took place at the Yeltsin Center (Ekaterinburg) in order to promote the MA programme in Russian regions.

The workshop “How to Turn a Large Pumpkin into a Big Carriage” addressed the question as to how to turn real people and events into novel heroes and actions. The lesson consisted of two parts, namely theory and practice. At the beginning, Maya Kucherskaya gave examples from Russian classic literature and demonstrated how Ivan Bunin and Leo Tolstoy worked with the prototypes for the characters of their books. Participants were then tasked with describing a journey to the Yeltsin Center.

All the participants succeeded in the task by using either drama or humour. An accident at the crossroads, a bunny rabbit chased by the cat, lonely wandering through the shops, forgotten mittens and waiting for one’s beloved were described in the short stories. However, what was reality and what was fiction will remain a secret.

Maya Kucherskaya – on the topic of the meetings in Yekaterinburg:

 The meetings were very meaningful. I met like-minded people who asked clever questions and worked extremely well at the workshop.

Maya A. Kucherskaya
Professor

As part of the trip to Yekaterinburg, Maya Kucherskaya and assistant, Anna Pravdyuk, also presented the Master's Programme ‘Creative Writing’ and met with Maya Kucherskaya’s readers.

We thank the Yeltsin Center team on behalf of Denis Korneevsky, Oleg Lutokhin and Alexander Bakin, for organizing the meetings.