This week-long intensive course will focus on that crucial element for creating socially layered, culturally nuanced, but ultimately accessible stories: context. During the course of the week, you will be given several exercises aimed at efficiently integrating backstory, socio-political context, and character background into a narrative. Students will post their writing, whether as a result of the prompts or a piece of their choosing, to be commented on via blog by myself and their peers. You will also be provided with a series of detailed approaches—alongside specific examples from authors such as Jhumpa Lahiri, J.M Coetzee, Ha Jin, Toni Morrison, Julian Barnes, and Rachel Kushner—to ensure that the context you include in a piece of fiction fits smoothly into the narrative, heightens tension, enriches plot, and deepens characters. At the end of the week, I will communicate at length with students individually via email to discuss their strengths, weaknesses, and concerns in relation to context. Students will have the choice of having this interaction with me via phone as well. The overall focus will be to leave the course with clear and effective methods to enhance the world of a story while sustaining narrative momentum.