Making Monsters

What do you do when you encounter monstrosity in real life—and want to write about it? Does monstrosity look like John Carey Merrick, or Bernie Madoff, or Ted Bundy, or a family member, an ex, a friend, or an acquaintance? How do you make real monsters read as both real and monstrous? In this class, we’ll look at examples of monsters and monstrosity to discover how best to write them ourselves, and then choosing a monster of our own, write their stories. Readings include Virginia Guiffre’s Nobody’s Girl, Tessa Hulls’s Feeding Ghosts, Dorothy Alison's Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, and Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter, among others.