Writing for an International Audience: Context, Voice and Specificity
About the course
Course Fee
85
Course Length
1 Day
Weekly Study
75 mins
Course summary
Live on Zoom: Saturday 19 September 2026, 11:00 am-12:15 pm ET / 4:00-5:15 pm UK | 60-75 mins | Seats capped at 15
Writing for an International Audience: Context, Voice and Specificity is a live, single-session masterclass for writers whose work includes places, customs, family histories, language, or reference points that some readers may not already know.
The session focuses on a practical question: how much do you need to explain when your reader doesn’t share your references?
You’ll look at how detail, memory, reference points, and voice can give readers enough context without stopping the story to explain everything or flattening what makes the work specific. Brief examples from international writers will show different ways of handling this on the page.
The class ends with a guided writing prompt to help you draft a 400–800-word scene or passage rooted in a place or experience your imagined reader may not already know.
You’ll leave with fresh material, a reusable Context Cues Worksheet, and a clearer sense of what your reader needs to know, what the writing can imply, and what can remain unexplained.
How you will learn
You’ll learn through a focused mix of craft teaching, brief close reading, and guided drafting during the session — leaving with a new scene draft and a repeatable method for making culture and identity legible on the page without over-explaining.
- Live Zoom session (60–75 minutes): short teaching segment, close discussion of short excerpts, then guided writing.
- Signature exercise (in-session): a structured prompt to draft a scene exploring identity and cross-cultural tension (recommended 400–800 words).
- Practical Q&A: bring a project, idea, or craft question about audience, clarity, and cultural reference points.
- Optional share moment: share a short excerpt or reflection if you want — sharing is always opt-in.
- Optional upload (if enabled): submit your exercise draft after the session for light-touch guidance focused on next steps (not line-by-line edits).
- Worksheet download: a one-page worksheet you can reuse to map identity, audience, and context cues for future drafts.
- Replay: not recorded unless agreed in writing in advance.
The Tutor
Megan Turner
Megan Turner is a fiction writer, teacher and developmental editor. She grew up between Harrogate, England and Maryland in the US, later spent a year teaching English in Korea, and now lives in Maine.
Her writing often draws on questions of place, belonging and what happens when familiar cultural reference points shift. Her Litro essay On Being American draws on her experience of teaching in Korea and growing up between England and the US.
Megan holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her work has appeared in Witness, Atticus Review, Rio Grande Review, Fiction International and elsewhere. She has taught fiction with Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and has worked as a developmental editor on more than 100 books.
Read Megan in Litro: On Being American →
