Replay: View Peter Orner's recent class.
Plus: Replays of great sessions from five more writers we admire.
“The stories that we repeat again and again in our families, in our groups of friends – why do certain stories stick?”
“Sometimes we deliberately don’t know, even when we might know…. You have to imagine not knowing.”
Fact and uncertainty, I think, is where fiction often can grow.
“Fiction writers have to be experts on humanness, not on fact.”
“It isn’t the truth, it’s what we do with it.”
—Peter Orner, Five Things I’ve Learned about Messing with the Truth (In Order to Lie)
Thanks again to celebrated novelist, essayist, short-story writer, and professor Peter Orner, who joined us live Sunday night to share all he’s learned about the ways that great writers bind fact and invention to create something new: the fictions we cherish.
In Five Things I’ve Learned about Messing with the Truth (In Order to Lie), Peter explores how writers use real facts, memories, and experiences as the starting point for creating fiction. Through examples from notable authors and his own work, he examines how fact and imagination combine to produce stories that feel true even when they are invented.
If you weren’t able to join us live, please check out the free Replay of Sunday night’s session below. Then, please discover five more Replays from five more writers we admire.
More soon,
-The Five Things I’ve Learned team.
Replay: Peter Orner Shares Five Things He’s Learned about Messing with the Truth (In Order to Lie)
View this Replay of the first five minutes of our live class with celebrated novelist, essayist, short-story writer, and professor Peter Orner. Then, check out the full two-hour archive and discover the Five Things He’s Learned about the ways that great writers bind fact and invention to create something new: the fictions we cherish.
Related Replays: Five More Writers We Admire
Replay: Kim Addonizio shares the Five Things She's Learned about Shaping the Personal Essay
“One thing that helps when you’re a writer is being a perfectionist. The other thing that helps is being kind of chaotic and unlike the normal people that have everything together.”
View the Replay of the first five minutes of our live class from poet, fiction writer, and essayist Kim Addonizio. Then, check out the two-hour archive and discover the Five Things She’s Learned about the opportunities that personal writing offers writers and readers – and about the strategies and approaches you can use right away to tell the stories you need to tell about your own life.
Replay: Rabih Alameddine shares Five Things He's Learned about Being Grumpy
“That was the night I realized that I am not a writer from Beirut. I am not an Arab writer. I’m not a Muslim writer. I’m a fucking grumpy writer.”
View the Replay of the first five minutes of our live class from internationally-acclaimed writer Rabih Alameddine. Then, check out the 90-minute archive and discover the few things he’s learned about the elasticity of identity and imagination.
Replay: Steve Almond shares Five Things He's Learned about Where Stories Come From
“Language is an instrument of Truth…. You throw Truth at the page and the residue left by the pursuit of that Truth is Beauty.”
View the Replay of the first five minutes of our live class from bestselling writer and teacher Steve Almond. Then, check out the two-hour archive and discover the Five Things he’s Learned about the powerful emotions that serve as the engines of our storytelling – and about the ways that these emotions show up in literature, shape our writing, and inform our lives.
View the Replay of the first five minutes of our live class from acclaimed historian and writer Catherine Grace Katz. Then, check out the 90-minute archive and discover the Five Things She’s Learned about how to uncover and share the stories that challenge our ideas of history.
Replay: Stephanie Land shares Five Things She's Learned about Writing, From the Margins of America
“People would talk about new parenting trends, and I was a person parenting under the poverty line—that trend simply didn’t apply to me for certain reasons. That became my superpower.”
View the Replay of the first five minutes of our live class from writer and speaker Stephanie Land. Then, check out the two-hour archive and discover the Five Things She’s Learned about writing that breaks down walls and encourages empathy toward others – and about how you can claim and share your personal expertise in your own writing.
Visit myfivethings.com to view personal video invitations from poets, writers, thinkers, and artists we admire.
Watching these clips is a great way to see just how wise and varied Five Things I’ve Learned classes can be. Get our MultiPass to purchase access to any three archived classes for just $60—or get six archived classes of your choosing for $90. (The only note: The Multipass applies to our archives, not to the sessions in our current season.)
Learn more at myfivethings.com, and find us on Substack, where you can view Replays of more than 150 great classes, and subscribe to ongoing newsletters from Five Things I’ve Learned friends including Peter Orner, Stephanie Land and more.