Through the Kaleidoscope: Crafting Interlocking Stories: a Rochester Reads Master Class
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Join us for a deep-dive into the art of crafting “linked” story collections, featuring three past Rochester Reads selections, with award-winning fiction writer Lauren Acampora.
Inspired by three exceptional Rochester Reads selections—Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter(2002), Andrea Barrett’s Servants of the Map (2005), and Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits(2008), this master class will explore vastly different novels that operate through the shared uncommon structure of interlocking narratives and intersecting characters. Using these examples as mentor texts, we will examine how their shifting lenses open new perspectives for the reader and add complexity and depth to a story. Generative in-class writing exercises will allow us to experiment with switches in character and vantage point, aiming to heighten drama, pull a reader more fully into a story, and reflect the kaleidoscopic nature of truth itself.
Lauren Acampora is the author of The Wonder Garden, The Paper Wasp, and The Hundred Waters, all published by Grove Atlantic. Her new collection of linked stories, The Animal Room, is forthcoming in June 2026 and features the story “Dominion,” which was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2025 and performed on stage for Selected Shorts.
Lauren’s first novel, The Paper Wasp was named a Best Summer Read by The New York Times Book Review,USA Today, Oprah Magazine, ELLE, Town & Country, BBC.com, Daily Mail (UK), Tatler, Thrillist, and Publishers Weekly, as well as a Best Indie Novel of 2019 by Chicago Review of Books. It was also longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and nominated for the Kirkus Prize. The Hundred Waters was named one of Vogue’s best books of the year, a LitHub best book of the summer, and one of The Millions’ most-anticipated books of 2022.
Lauren’s short fiction and other writing has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as The Paris Review, One Story, New England Review, Story Magazine, Guernica, Missouri Review, The Common, Prairie Schooner, Antioch Review, The New York Times, and LitHub, and was anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2025. She graduated from Brown University, earned an MFA at Brooklyn College, and has received fellowships from MacDowell, Ucross, Ragdale Foundation, Art OMI, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Raised in Connecticut, Lauren lives in Westchester County, New York with her husband, artist Thomas Doyle, and their daughter.
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